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B J C
I

T he Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a utter of the

sails, and was at rest. e ood had made, the wind was nearly calm,
and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and
wait for the turn of the tide.
e sea-reach of the ames stretched before us like the beginning of an
interminable waterway. In the o ng the sea and the sky were welded
together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the
barges dri ing up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of
canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on
the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing atness. e air was dark
above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful
gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on
earth.
e Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We four
a ectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to seaward.
On the whole river there was nothing that looked half so nautical. He
resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personi ed. It was
di cult 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 e ect of making us tolerant of each other’s yarns—and even
convictions. e 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. e Accountant had brought out already a box of dominoes, and
was toying architecturally with the bones. Marlow sat cross-legged right a ,
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. e director, satis ed the
anchor had good hold, made his way a and sat down amongst us. We
exchanged a few words lazily. A erwards there was silence on board the
yacht. For some reason or other we did not begin that game of dominoes.
We felt meditative, and t for nothing but placid staring. e day was
ending in a serenity of still and exquisite brilliance. e water shone
paci cally; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained
light; the very mist on the Essex marsh was like a gauzy and radiant fabric,
hung from the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in
diaphanous folds. Only the gloom to the west, brooding over the upper
reaches, became more sombre every minute, as if angered by the approach
of the sun.
And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and
from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as
if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom
brooding over a crowd of men.
Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became less
brilliant but more profound. e old river in its broad reach rested
unru ed at the decline of day, a er ages of good service done to the race
that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway
leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the venerable
stream not in the vivid ush of a short day that comes and departs for ever,
but in the august light of abiding memories. And indeed nothing is easier
for a man who has, as the phrase goes, ‘followed the sea’ with reverence
and a ection, that to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower
reaches of the ames. e tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing
service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest
of home or to the battles of the sea. It had known and served all the men of
whom the nation is proud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin,
knights all, titled and untitled—the great knights-errant of the sea. It had
borne all the ships whose names are like jewels ashing in the night of
time, from the GOLDEN HIND returning with her rotund anks full of
treasure, to be visited by the Queen’s Highness and thus pass out of the
gigantic tale, to the EREBUS and TERROR, bound on other conquests—
and that never returned. It had known the ships and the men. ey had
sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith— the adventurers and
the settlers; kings’ ships and the ships of men on ‘Change; captains,
admirals, the dark ‘interlopers’ of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned
‘generals’ of East India eets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all
had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and o en the torch,
messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred
re. What greatness had not oated on the ebb of that river into the
mystery of an unknown earth! … e dreams of men, the seed of
commonwealths, the germs of empires.
e sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear along
the shore. e Chapman light-house, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-
at, 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.’ e 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. eir minds are of the stay-at-home order, and
their home is always with them—the ship; and so is their country—the sea.
One ship is very much like another, and the sea is always the same. In the
immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the
changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but
by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a
seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and
as inscrutable as Destiny. For the rest, a er his hours of work, a casual stroll
or a casual spree on shore su ces to unfold for him the secret of a whole
continent, and generally he nds the secret not worth knowing. e yarns
of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within
the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to
spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not
inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out
only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos
that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.
His remark did not seem at all surprising. It was just like Marlow. It was
accepted in silence. No one took the trouble to grunt even; and presently
he said, very slow—‘I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans
rst came here, nineteen hundred years ago—the other day…. Light came
out of this river since—you say Knights? Yes; but it is like a running blaze
on a plain, like a ash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the icker—
may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here
yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of a ne—what d’ye call
‘em?—trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north; run
overland across the Gauls in a hurry; put in charge of one of these cra the
legionaries—a wonderful lot of handy men they must have been, too—used
to build, apparently by the hundred, in a month or two, if we may believe
what we read. Imagine him here—the very end of the world, a sea the
colour of lead, a sky the colour of smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as a
concertina— and going up this river with stores, or orders, or what you like.
Sand-banks, marshes, forests, savages,—precious little to eat t for a
civilized man, nothing but ames 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. ey must have been
dying like ies here. Oh, yes—he did it. Did it very well, too, no doubt, and
without thinking much about it either, except a erwards to brag of what he
had gone through in his time, perhaps. ey were men enough to face the
darkness. And perhaps he was cheered by keeping his eye on a chance of
promotion to the eet 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. ere’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. e 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, li ing 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- ower
—‘Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves us is e ciency
—the devotion to e ciency. But these chaps were not much account, really.
ey were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and
nothing more, I suspect. ey were conquerors, and for that you want only
brute force— nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is
just an accident arising from the weakness of others. ey grabbed what
they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with
violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind—as
is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. e conquest of the earth,
which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a di erent
complexion or slightly atter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing
when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea
at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unsel sh
belief in the idea—something you can set up, and bow down before, and
o er a sacri ce to. …’
He broke o . Flames glided in the river, small green ames, red ames,
white ames, pursuing, overtaking, joining, crossing each other— then
separating slowly or hastily. e tra c of the great city went on in the
deepening night upon the sleepless river. We looked on, waiting patiently—
there was nothing else to do till the end of the ood; but it was only a er a
long silence, when he said, in a hesitating voice, ‘I suppose you fellows
remember I did once turn fresh-water sailor for a bit,’ that we knew we
were fated, before the ebb began to run, to hear about one of Marlow’s
inconclusive experiences.
‘I don’t want to bother you much with what happened to me personally,’
he began, showing in this remark the weakness of many tellers of tales who
seem so o en unaware of what their audience would like best to hear; ‘yet
to understand the e ect of it on me you ought to know how I got out there,
what I saw, how I went up that river to the place where I rst 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 a er a lot of
Indian Ocean, Paci c, China Seas—a regular dose of the East—six years or
so, and I was loa ng 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 ne for a time, but a er a bit I did get tired of resting.
en 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 nger on it and say, ‘When I grow up I
will go there.’ e North Pole was one of these places, I remember. Well, I
haven’t been there yet, and shall not try now. e glamour’s o . 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 a er.
‘True, by this time it was not a blank space any more. It had got lled
since my boyhood with rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased to be a
blank space of delightful mystery— a white patch for a boy to dream
gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness. But there was in it one
river especially, a mighty big river, that you could see on the map,
resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at
rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the
land. And as I looked at the map of it in a shop-window, it fascinated me as
a snake would a bird—a silly little bird. en I remembered there was a big
concern, a Company for trade on that river. Dash it all! I thought to myself,
they can’t trade without using some kind of cra on that lot of fresh water
—steamboats! Why shouldn’t I try to get charge of one? I went on along
Fleet Street, but could not shake o the idea. e snake had charmed me.
‘You understand it was a Continental concern, that Trading society; but I
have a lot of relations living on the Continent, because it’s cheap and not so
nasty as it looks, they say.
‘I am sorry to own I began to worry them. is was already a fresh
departure for me. I was not used to get things that way, you know. I always
went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go. I
wouldn’t have believed it of myself; but, then—you see—I felt somehow I
must get there by hook or by crook. So I worried them. e men said ‘My
dear fellow,’ and did nothing. en—would you believe it?—I tried the
women. I, Charlie Marlow, set the women to work— to get a job. Heavens!
Well, you see, the notion drove me. I had an aunt, a dear enthusiastic soul.
She wrote: ‘It will be delightful. I am ready to do anything, anything for
you. It is a glorious idea. I know the wife of a very high personage in the
Administration, and also a man who has lots of in uence 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
scu e with the natives. is was my chance, and it made me the more
anxious to go. It was only months and months a erwards, when I made the
attempt to recover what was le 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. erefore 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. en the whole population cleared
into the forest, expecting all kinds of calamities to happen, while, on the
other hand, the steamer Fresleven commanded le also in a bad panic, in
charge of the engineer, I believe. A erwards 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 o ered at last to meet
my predecessor, the grass growing through his ribs was tall enough to hide
his bones. ey were all there. e supernatural being had not been
touched a er he fell. And the village was deserted, the huts gaped black,
rotting, all askew within the fallen enclosures. A calamity had come to it,
sure enough. e people had vanished. Mad terror had scattered them,
men, women, and children, through the bush, and they had never
returned. What became of the hens I don’t know either. I should think the
cause of progress got them, anyhow. However, through this glorious a air I
got my appointment, before I had fairly begun to hope for it.
‘I ew around like mad to get ready, and before forty-eight hours I was
crossing the Channel to show myself to my employers, and sign the
contract. In a very few hours I arrived in a city that always makes me think
of a whited sepulchre. Prejudice no doubt. I had no di culty in nding the
Company’s o ces. It was the biggest thing in the town, and everybody I
met was full of it. ey were going to run an over-sea empire, and make no
end of coin by trade.
‘A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, high houses, innumerable
windows with venetian blinds, a dead silence, grass sprouting right and le ,
immense double doors standing ponderously ajar. I slipped through one of
these cracks, went up a swept and ungarnished staircase, as arid as a desert,
and opened the rst door I came to. Two women, one fat and the other
slim, sat on straw-bottomed chairs, knitting black wool. e slim one got up
and walked straight at me— still knitting with downcast eyes—and only
just as I began to think of getting out of her way, as you would for a
somnambulist, stood still, and looked up. Her dress was as plain as an
umbrella-cover, and she turned round without a word and preceded me
into a waiting-room. I gave my name, and looked about. Deal table in the
middle, plain chairs all round the walls, on one end a large shining map,
marked with all the colours of a rainbow. ere 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 fore nger 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. e great man
himself. He was ve 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 satis ed with my French. BON VOYAGE.
 ‘In about forty- ve seconds I found myself again in the waiting-room with
the compassionate secretary, who, full of desolation and sympathy, made
me sign some document. I believe I undertook amongst other things not to
disclose any trade secrets. Well, I am not going to.
‘I began to feel slightly uneasy. You know I am not used to such
ceremonies, and there was something ominous in the atmosphere. It was
just as though I had been let into some conspiracy— I don’t know—
something not quite right; and I was glad to get out. In the outer room the
two women knitted black wool feverishly. People were arriving, and the
younger one was walking back and forth introducing them. e old one sat
on her chair. Her at cloth slippers were propped up on a foot-warmer, and
a cat reposed on her lap. She wore a starched white a air on her head, had
a wart on one cheek, and silver-rimmed spectacles hung on the tip of her
nose. She glanced at me above the glasses. e swi and indi erent
placidity of that look troubled me. Two youths with foolish and cheery
countenances were being piloted over, and she threw at them the same
quick glance of unconcerned wisdom. She seemed to know all about them
and about me, too. An eerie feeling came over me. She seemed uncanny
and fateful. O en far away there I thought of these two, guarding the door
of Darkness, knitting black wool as for a warm pall, one introducing,
introducing continuously to the unknown, the other scrutinizing the cheery
and foolish faces with unconcerned old eyes. AVE! Old knitter of black
wool. MORITURI TE SALUTANT. Not many of those she looked at ever
saw her again—not half, by a long way.
‘ ere was yet a visit to the doctor. ‘A simple formality,’ assured me the
secretary, with an air of taking an immense part in all my sorrows.
Accordingly a young chap wearing his hat over the le eyebrow, some clerk
I suppose—there must have been clerks in the business, though the house
was as still as a house in a city of the dead— came from somewhere up-
stairs, and led me forth. He was shabby and careless, with inkstains on the
sleeves of his jacket, and his cravat was large and billowy, under a chin
shaped like the toe of an old boot. It was a little too early for the doctor, so
I proposed a drink, and thereupon he developed a vein of joviality. As we
sat over our vermouths he glori ed the Company’s business, and by and by
I expressed casually my surprise at him not going out there. He became
very cool and collected all at once. ‘I am not such a fool as I look, quoth
Plato to his disciples,’ he said sententiously, emptied his glass with great
resolution, and we rose.
‘ e 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. is is my share in the advantages my
country shall reap from the possession of such a magni cent dependency.
e mere wealth I leave to others. Pardon my questions, but you are the
rst Englishman coming under my observation …’ I hastened to assure him
I was not in the least typical. ‘If I were,’ said I, ‘I wouldn’t be talking like this
with you.’ ‘What you say is rather profound, and probably erroneous,’ he
said, with a laugh. ‘Avoid irritation more than exposure to the sun. Adieu.
How do you English say, eh? Good-bye. Ah! Good-bye. Adieu. In the
tropics one must before everything keep calm.’ … He li ed a warning
fore nger…. ‘DU CALME, DU CALME. ADIEU.’
‘One thing more remained to do—say good-bye to my excellent aunt. I
found her triumphant. I had a cup of tea—the last decent cup of tea for
many days—and in a room that most soothingly looked just as you would
expect a lady’s drawing-room to look, we had a long quiet chat by the
reside. In the course of these con dences it became quite plain to me I
had been represented to the wife of the high dignitary, and goodness
knows to how many more people besides, as an exceptional and gi ed
creature— a piece of good fortune for the Company—a man you don’t get
hold of every day. Good heavens! and I was going to take charge of a two-
penny-half-penny river-steamboat with a penny whistle attached! It
appeared, however, I was also one of the Workers, with a capital— you
know. Something like an emissary of light, something like a lower sort of
apostle. ere had been a lot of such rot let loose in print and talk just
about that time, and the excellent woman, living right in the rush of all that
humbug, got carried o her feet. She talked about ‘weaning those ignorant
millions from their horrid ways,’ till, upon my word, she made me quite
uncomfortable. I ventured to hint that the Company was run for pro t.
‘You forget, dear Charlie, that the labourer is worthy of his hire,’ she said,
brightly. It’s queer how out of touch with truth women are. ey live in a
world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never
can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would
go to pieces before the rst 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.
‘A er this I got embraced, told to wear annel, be sure to write o en, and
so on—and I le . 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 a air. e 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 o
for the centre of the earth.
‘I le 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 o cers. I watched the coast. Watching a coast as it slips by
the ship is like thinking about an enigma. ere it is before you— smiling,
frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with
an air of whispering, ‘Come and nd out.’ is one was almost featureless,
as if still in the making, with an aspect of monotonous grimness. e 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. e sun was erce, the land seemed
to glisten and drip with steam. Here and there greyish-whitish specks
showed up clustered inside the white surf, with a ag ying above them
perhaps. Settlements some centuries old, and still no bigger than pinheads
on the untouched expanse of their background. We pounded along,
stopped, landed soldiers; went on, landed custom-house clerks to levy toll
in what looked like a God-forsaken wilderness, with a tin shed and a ag-
pole lost in it; landed more soldiers—to take care of the custom-house
clerks, presumably. Some, I heard, got drowned in the surf; but whether
they did or not, nobody seemed particularly to care. ey were just ung
out there, and on we went. Every day the coast looked the same, as though
we had not moved; but we passed various places—trading places—with
names like Gran’ Bassam, Little Popo; names that seemed to belong to some
sordid farce acted in front of a sinister back-cloth. e idleness of a
passenger, my isolation amongst all these men with whom I had no point of
contact, the oily and languid sea, the uniform sombreness of the coast,
seemed to keep me away from the truth of things, within the toil of a
mournful and senseless delusion. e voice of the surf heard now and then
was a positive pleasure, like the speech of a brother. It was something
natural, that had its reason, that had a meaning. Now and then a boat from
the shore gave one a momentary contact with reality. It was paddled by
black fellows. You could see from afar the white of their eyeballs glistening.
ey shouted, sang; their bodies streamed with perspiration; they had faces
like grotesque masks—these chaps; but they had bone, muscle, a wild
vitality, an intense energy of movement, that was as natural and true as the
surf along their coast. ey wanted no excuse for being there. ey were a
great comfort to look at. For a time I would feel I belonged still to a world
of straightforward facts; but the feeling would not last long. Something
would turn up to scare it away. Once, I remember, we came upon a man-
of-war anchored o the coast. ere wasn’t even a shed there, and she was
shelling the bush. It appears the French had one of their wars going on
thereabouts. Her ensign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long
six-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung
her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty
immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, ring
into a continent. Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a small ame
would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny
projectile would give a feeble screech—and nothing happened. Nothing
could happen. ere 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 o 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 o the seat of the government. But my work would not begin till
some two hundred miles farther on. So as soon as I could I made a start for
a place thirty miles higher up.
‘I had my passage on a little sea-going steamer. Her captain was a Swede,
and knowing me for a seaman, invited me on the bridge. He was a young
man, lean, fair, and morose, with lanky hair and a shu ing gait. As we le
the miserable little wharf, he tossed his head contemptuously at the shore.
‘Been living there?’ he asked. I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Fine lot these government chaps
—are they not?’ he went on, speaking English with great precision and
considerable bitterness. ‘It is funny what some people will do for a few
francs a month. I wonder what becomes of that kind when it goes
upcountry?’ I said to him I expected to see that soon. ‘So-o-o!’ he
exclaimed. He shu ed athwart, keeping one eye ahead vigilantly. ‘Don’t be
too sure,’ he continued. ‘ e other day I took up a man who hanged
himself on the road. He was a Swede, too.’ ‘Hanged himself! Why, in God’s
name?’ I cried. He kept on looking out watchfully. ‘Who knows? e sun
too much for him, or the country perhaps.’
 ‘At last we opened a reach. A rocky cli appeared, mounds of turned-up
earth by the shore, houses on a hill, others with iron roofs, amongst a waste
of excavations, or hanging to the declivity. A continuous noise of the rapids
above hovered over this scene of inhabited devastation. A lot of people,
mostly black and naked, moved about like ants. A jetty projected into the
river. A blinding sunlight drowned all this at times in a sudden
recrudescence of glare. ‘ ere’s your Company’s station,’ said the Swede,
pointing to three wooden barrack-like structures on the rocky slope. ‘I will
send your things up. Four boxes did you say? So. Farewell.’
‘I came upon a boiler wallowing in the grass, then found a path leading
up the hill. It turned aside for the boulders, and also for an undersized
railway-truck lying there on its back with its wheels in the air. One was o .
e 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 le 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 pu of smoke came
out of the cli , and that was all. No change appeared on the face of the
rock. ey were building a railway. e cli 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 le, toiling up the path. ey 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 cli made
me think suddenly of that ship of war I had seen ring into a continent. It
was the same kind of ominous voice; but these men could by no stretch of
imagination be called enemies. ey 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. ey
passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete,
deathlike indi erence of unhappy savages. Behind this raw matter one of
the reclaimed, the product of the new forces at work, strolled
despondently, carrying a ri e by its middle. He had a uniform jacket with
one button o , and seeing a white man on the path, hoisted his weapon to
his shoulder with alacrity. is was simple prudence, white men being so
much alike at a distance that he could not tell who I might be. He was
speedily reassured, and with a large, white, rascally grin, and a glance at his
charge, seemed to take me into partnership in his exalted trust. A er all, I
also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings.
‘Instead of going up, I turned and descended to the le . My idea was to
let that chain-gang get out of sight before I climbed the hill. You know I am
not particularly tender; I’ve had to strike and to fend o . I’ve had to resist
and to attack sometimes—that’s only one way of resisting— without
counting the exact cost, according to the demands of such sort of life as I
had blundered into. I’ve seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed,
and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! these were strong, lusty,
red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men—men, I tell you. But as I
stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I
would become acquainted with a abby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a
rapacious and pitiless folly. How insidious he could be, too, I was only to
nd out several months later and a thousand miles farther. For a moment I
stood appalled, as though by a warning. Finally I descended the hill,
obliquely, towards the trees I had seen.
‘I avoided a vast arti cial hole somebody had been digging on the slope,
the purpose of which I found it impossible to divine. It wasn’t a quarry or a
sandpit, anyhow. It was just a hole. It might have been connected with the
philanthropic desire of giving the criminals something to do. I don’t know.
en 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. ere 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.
e rapids were near, and an uninterrupted, uniform, headlong, rushing
noise lled 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 e aced within the dim
light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair. Another mine
on the cli went o , followed by a slight shudder of the soil under my feet.
e work was going on. e work! And this was the place where some of
the helpers had withdrawn to die.
‘ ey were dying slowly—it was very clear. ey 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 ine cient, and were then allowed to crawl away and
rest. ese moribund shapes were free as air—and nearly as thin. I began to
distinguish the gleam of the eyes under the trees. en, glancing down, I
saw a face near my hand. e black bones reclined at full length with one
shoulder against the tree, and slowly the eyelids rose and the sunken eyes
looked up at me, enormous and vacant, a kind of blind, white icker in the
depths of the orbs, which died out slowly. e man seemed young— almost
a boy—but you know with them it’s hard to tell. I found nothing else to do
but to o er him one of my good Swede’s ship’s biscuits I had in my pocket.
e ngers closed slowly on it and held—there was no other movement
and no other glance. He had tied a bit of white worsted round his neck—
Why? Where did he get it? Was it a badge—an ornament—a charm— a
propitiatory act? Was there any idea at all connected with it? It looked
startling round his black neck, this bit of white thread from beyond the
seas.
‘Near the same tree two more bundles of acute angles sat with their legs
drawn up. One, with his chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing, in
an intolerable and appalling manner: his brother phantom rested its
forehead, as if overcome with a great weariness; and all about others were
scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture of a
massacre or a pestilence. While I stood horror-struck, one of these
creatures rose to his hands and knees, and went o on all-fours towards
the river to drink. He lapped out of his hand, then sat up in the sunlight,
crossing his shins in front of him, and a er a time let his woolly head fall
on his breastbone.
 ‘I didn’t want any more loitering in the shade, and I made haste towards
the station. When near the buildings I met a white man, in such an
unexpected elegance of get-up that in the rst moment I took him for a sort
of vision. I saw a high starched collar, white cu s, a light alpaca jacket,
snowy trousers, a clean necktie, and varnished boots. No hat. Hair parted,
brushed, oiled, under a green-lined parasol held in a big white hand. He
was amazing, and had a penholder behind his ear.
‘I shook hands with this miracle, and I learned he was the Company’s
chief accountant, and that all the book-keeping was done at this station. He
had come out for a moment, he said, ‘to get a breath of fresh air. e
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 rst 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 cu s, 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. at’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 di cult. She had a distaste for the work.’ us 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 o ce. It was built of horizontal planks, and so badly put
together that, as he bent over his high desk, he was barred from neck to
heels with narrow strips of sunlight. ere was no need to open the big
shutter to see. It was hot there, too; big ies buzzed endishly, and did not
sting, but stabbed. I sat generally on the oor, while, of faultless appearance
(and even slightly scented), perching on a high stool, he wrote, he wrote.
Sometimes he stood up for exercise. When a truckle-bed with a sick man
(some invalid agent from upcountry) was put in there, he exhibited a
gentle annoyance. ‘ e groans of this sick person,’ he said, ‘distract my
attention. And without that it is extremely di cult to guard against clerical
errors in this climate.’
‘One day he remarked, without li ing his head, ‘In the interior you will
no doubt meet Mr. Kurtz.’ On my asking who Mr. Kurtz was, he said he was
a rst-class agent; and seeing my disappointment at this information, he
added slowly, laying down his pen, ‘He is a very remarkable person.’
Further questions elicited from him that Mr. Kurtz was at present in charge
of a trading-post, a very important one, in the true ivory-country, at ‘the
very bottom of there. Sends in as much ivory as all the others put together
…’ He began to write again. e sick man was too ill to groan. e ies
buzzed in a great peace.
‘Suddenly there was a growing murmur of voices and a great tramping of
feet. A caravan had come in. A violent babble of uncouth sounds burst out
on the other side of the planks. All the carriers were speaking together, and
in the midst of the uproar the lamentable voice of the chief agent was
heard ‘giving it up’ tearfully for the twentieth time that day…. He rose
slowly. ‘What a frightful row,’ he said. He crossed the room gently to look at
the sick man, and returning, said to me, ‘He does not hear.’ ‘What! Dead?’ I
asked, startled. ‘No, not yet,’ he answered, with great composure. en,
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. ey, above—the Council in Europe, you
know—mean him to be.’
‘He turned to his work. e noise outside had ceased, and presently in
going out I stopped at the door. In the steady buzz of ies the homeward-
bound agent was lying nished and insensible; the other, bent over his
books, was making correct entries of perfectly correct transactions; and y
feet below the doorstep I could see the still tree-tops of the grove of death.
‘Next day I le 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. e population had cleared out a long time
ago. Well, if a lot of mysterious niggers armed with all kinds of fearful
weapons suddenly took to travelling on the road between Deal and
Gravesend, catching the yokels right and le to carry heavy loads for them,
I fancy every farm and cottage thereabouts would get empty very soon.
Only here the dwellings were gone, too. Still I passed through several
abandoned villages. ere’s something pathetically childish in the ruins of
grass walls. Day a er day, with the stamp and shu e of sixty pair of bare
feet behind me, each pair under a 60-lb. load. Camp, cook, sleep, strike
camp, march. Now and then a carrier dead in harness, at rest in the long
grass near the path, with an empty water-gourd and his long sta lying by
his side. A great silence around and above. Perhaps on some quiet night the
tremor of far-o drums, sinking, swelling, a tremor vast, faint; a sound
weird, appealing, suggestive, and wild—and perhaps with as profound a
meaning as the sound of bells in a Christian country. Once a white man in
an unbuttoned uniform, camping on the path with an armed escort of lank
Zanzibaris, very hospitable and festive— not to say drunk. Was looking
a er the upkeep of the road, he declared. Can’t say I saw any road or any
upkeep, unless the body of a middle-aged negro, with a bullet-hole in the
forehead, upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles farther on, may be
considered as a permanent improvement. I had a white companion, too,
not a bad chap, but rather too eshy and with the exasperating habit of
fainting on the hot hillsides, miles away from the least bit of shade and
water. Annoying, you know, to hold your own coat like a parasol over a
man’s head while he is coming to. I couldn’t help asking him once what he
meant by coming there at all. ‘To make money, of course. What do you
think?’ he said, scornfully. en he got fever, and had to be carried in a
hammock slung under a pole. As he weighed sixteen stone I had no end of
rows with the carriers. ey jibbed, ran away, sneaked o with their loads
in the night—quite a mutiny. So, one evening, I made a speech in English
with gestures, not one of which was lost to the sixty pairs of eyes before me,
and the next morning I started the hammock o in front all right. An hour
a erwards I came upon the whole concern wrecked in a bush—man,
hammock, groans, blankets, horrors. e 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 scienti cally interesting. However, all that is to
no purpose. On the eenth 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 rst glance at the place was enough to let you
see the abby 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.’ e ‘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 signi cance of that wreck at once. I fancy I see it
now, but I am not sure—not at all. Certainly the a air was too stupid—
when I think of it— to be altogether natural. Still … But at the moment it
presented itself simply as a confounded nuisance. e steamer was sunk.
ey had started two days before in a sudden hurry up the river with the
manager on board, in charge of some volunteer skipper, and before they
had been out three hours they tore the bottom out of her on stones, and
she sank near the south bank. I asked myself what I was to do there, now
my boat was lost. As a matter of fact, I had plenty to do in shing my
command out of the river. I had to set about it the very next day. at, and
the repairs when I brought the pieces to the station, took some months.
‘My rst interview with the manager was curious. He did not ask me to sit
down a er my twenty-mile walk that morning. He was commonplace in
complexion, in features, in manners, and in voice. He was of middle size
and of ordinary build. His eyes, of the usual blue, were perhaps remarkably
cold, and he certainly could make his glance fall on one as trenchant and
heavy as an axe. But even at these times the rest of his person seemed to
disclaim the intention. Otherwise there was only an inde nable, faint
expression of his lips, something stealthy— a smile—not a smile—I
remember it, but I can’t explain. It was unconscious, this smile was, though
just a er he had said something it got intensi ed for an instant. It came at
the end of his speeches like a seal applied on the words to make the
meaning of the commonest phrase appear absolutely inscrutable. He was a
common trader, from his youth up employed in these parts—nothing more.
He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He
inspired uneasiness. at was it! Uneasiness. Not a de nite mistrust—just
uneasiness—nothing more. You have no idea how e ective such a … a. …
faculty can be. He had no genius for organizing, for initiative, or for order
even. at was evident in such things as the deplorable state of the station.
He had no learning, and no intelligence. His position had come to him—
why? Perhaps because he was never ill … He had served three terms of
three years out there … Because triumphant health in the general rout of
constitutions is a kind of power in itself. When he went home on leave he
rioted on a large scale—pompously. Jack ashore—with a di erence— in
externals only. is 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. is was the station’s mess-room. Where he sat was the rst
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. e up-river stations had
to be relieved. ere had been so many delays already that he did not
know who was dead and who was alive, and how they got on—and so on,
and so on. He paid no attention to my explanations, and, playing with a
stick of sealing-wax, repeated several times that the situation was ‘very
grave, very grave.’ ere were rumours that a very important station was in
jeopardy, and its chief, Mr. Kurtz, was ill. Hoped it was not true. Mr. Kurtz
was … I felt weary and irritable. Hang Kurtz, I thought. I interrupted him
by saying I had heard of Mr. Kurtz on the coast. ‘Ah! So they talk of him
down there,’ he murmured to himself. en he began again, assuring me
Mr. Kurtz was the best agent he had, an exceptional man, of the greatest
importance to the Company; therefore I could understand his anxiety. He
was, he said, ‘very, very uneasy.’ Certainly he dgeted on his chair a good
deal, exclaimed, ‘Ah, Mr. Kurtz!’ broke the stick of sealing-wax and seemed
dumfounded by the accident. Next thing he wanted to know ‘how long it
would take to’ … I interrupted him again. Being hungry, you know, and
kept on my feet too. I was getting savage. ‘How can I tell?’ I said. ‘I haven’t
even seen the wreck yet— some months, no doubt.’ All this talk seemed to
me so futile. ‘Some months,’ he said. ‘Well, let us say three months before
we can make a start. Yes. at ought to do the a air.’ I ung out of his hut
(he lived all alone in a clay hut with a sort of verandah) muttering to myself
my opinion of him. He was a chattering idiot. A erwards I took it back
when it was borne in upon me startlingly with what extreme nicety he had
estimated the time requisite for the ‘a air.’
‘I went to work the next day, turning, so to speak, my back on that
station. In that way only it seemed to me I could keep my hold on the
redeeming facts of life. Still, one must look about sometimes; and then I
saw this station, these men strolling aimlessly about in the sunshine of the
yard. I asked myself sometimes what it all meant. ey wandered here and
there with their absurd long staves in their hands, like a lot of faithless
pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten fence. e 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 whi 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 re 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 li ed 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. ere was no hurry. You see the thing had gone o like a
box of matches. It had been hopeless from the very rst. e ame had
leaped high, driven everybody back, lighted up everything— and collapsed.
e shed was already a heap of embers glowing ercely. A nigger was being
beaten near by. ey said he had caused the re 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;
a erwards he arose and went out— and the wilderness without a sound
took him into its bosom again. As I approached the glow from the dark I
found myself at the back of two men, talking. I heard the name of Kurtz
pronounced, then the words, ‘take advantage of this unfortunate accident.’
One of the men was the manager. I wished him a good evening. ‘Did you
ever see anything like it— eh? it is incredible,’ he said, and walked o . e
other man remained. He was a rst-class agent, young, gentlemanly, a bit
reserved, with a forked little beard and a hooked nose. He was stand-o sh
with the other agents, and they on their side said he was the manager’s spy
upon them. As to me, I had hardly ever spoken to him before. We got into
talk, and by and by we strolled away from the hissing ruins. en he asked
me to his room, which was in the main building of the station. He struck a
match, and I perceived that this young aristocrat had not only a silver-
mounted dressing-case but also a whole candle all to himself. Just at that
time the manager was the only man supposed to have any right to candles.
Native mats covered the clay walls; a collection of spears, assegais, shields,
knives was hung up in trophies. e business intrusted to this fellow was
the making of bricks— so I had been informed; but there wasn’t a fragment
of a brick anywhere in the station, and he had been there more than a year
—waiting. It seems he could not make bricks without something, I don’t
know what—straw maybe. Anyway, it could not be found there and as it
was not likely to be sent from Europe, it did not appear clear to me what he
was waiting for. An act of special creation perhaps. However, they were all
waiting— all the sixteen or twenty pilgrims of them—for something; and
upon my word it did not seem an uncongenial occupation, from the way
they took it, though the only thing that ever came to them was disease— as
far as I could see. ey beguiled the time by back-biting and intriguing
against each other in a foolish kind of way. ere was an air of plotting
about that station, but nothing came of it, of course. It was as unreal as
everything else—as the philanthropic pretence of the whole concern, as
their talk, as their government, as their show of work. e 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. ey intrigued and slandered and
hated each other only on that account— but as to e ectually li ing a little
nger—oh, no. By heavens! there is something a er 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 rst
I was astonished, but very soon I became awfully curious to see what he
would nd 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 ba ed 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. en I noticed a small
sketch in oils, on a panel, representing a woman, draped and blindfolded,
carrying a lighted torch. e background was sombre—almost black. e
movement of the woman was stately, and the e ect of the torchlight on the
face was sinister.
‘It arrested me, and he stood by civilly, holding an empty half-pint
champagne bottle (medical comforts) with the candle stuck in it. To my
question he said Mr. Kurtz had painted this—in this very station more than
a year ago—while waiting for means to go to his trading post. ‘Tell me, pray,’
said I, ‘who is this Mr. Kurtz?’
‘ e chief of the Inner Station,’ he answered in a short tone, looking away.
‘Much obliged,’ I said, laughing. ‘And you are the brickmaker of the Central
Station. Every one knows that.’ He was silent for a while. ‘He is a prodigy,’
he said at last. ‘He is an emissary of pity and science and progress, and devil
knows what else. We want,’ he began to declaim suddenly, ‘for the guidance
of the cause intrusted to us by Europe, so to speak, higher intelligence,
wide sympathies, a singleness of purpose.’ ‘Who says that?’ I asked. ‘Lots of
them,’ he replied. ‘Some even write that; and so HE comes here, a special
being, as you ought to know.’ ‘Why ought I to know?’ I interrupted, really
surprised. He paid no attention. ‘Yes. Today he is chief of the best station,
next year he will be assistant-manager, two years more and … but I dare-
say you know what he will be in two years’ time. You are of the new gang—
the gang of virtue. e same people who sent him specially also
recommended you. Oh, don’t say no. I’ve my own eyes to trust.’ Light
dawned upon me. My dear aunt’s in uential acquaintances were producing
an unexpected e ect upon that young man. I nearly burst into a laugh. ‘Do
you read the Company’s con dential correspondence?’ I asked. He hadn’t a
word to say. It was great fun. ‘When Mr. Kurtz,’ I continued, severely, ‘is
General Manager, you won’t have the opportunity.’
‘He blew the candle out suddenly, and we went outside. e moon had
risen. Black gures 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. at’s the only
way. is will prevent all con agrations 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 mu s—
go to.’ e 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. e
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 fore nger through him, and would nd
nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe. He, don’t you see, had been
planning to be assistant-manager by and by under the present man, and I
could see that the coming of that Kurtz had upset them both not a little. He
talked precipitately, and I did not try to stop him. I had my shoulders
against the wreck of my steamer, hauled up on the slope like a carcass of
some big river animal. e smell of mud, of primeval mud, by Jove! was in
my nostrils, the high stillness of primeval forest was before my eyes; there
were shiny patches on the black creek. e moon had spread over
everything a thin layer of silver— over the rank grass, over the mud, upon
the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple,
over the great river I could see through a sombre gap glittering, glittering,
as it owed broadly by without a murmur. All this was great, expectant,
mute, while the man jabbered about himself. I wondered whether the
stillness on the face of the immensity looking at us two were meant as an
appeal or as a menace. What were we who had strayed in here? Could we
handle that dumb thing, or would it handle us? I felt how big, how
confoundedly big, was that thing that couldn’t talk, and perhaps was deaf as
well. What was in there? I could see a little ivory coming out from there,
and I had heard Mr. Kurtz was in there. I had heard enough about it, too—
God knows! Yet somehow it didn’t bring any image with it— no more than
if I had been told an angel or a end was in there. I believed it in the same
way one of you might believe there are inhabitants in the planet Mars. I
knew once a Scotch sailmaker who was certain, dead sure, there were
people in Mars. If you asked him for some idea how they looked and
behaved, he would get shy and mutter something about ‘walking on all-
fours.’ If you as much as smiled, he would—though a man of sixty— o er
to ght you. I would not have gone so far as to ght for Kurtz, but I went
for him near enough to a lie. You know I hate, detest, and can’t bear a lie,
not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls
me. ere is a taint of death, a avour 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 in uence in Europe. I
became in an instant as much of a pretence as the rest of the bewitched
pilgrims. is 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 re ecting, then added:
‘Of course in this you fellows see more than I could then. You see me,
whom you know. …’
It had become so pitch dark that we listeners could hardly see one
another. For a long time already he, sitting apart, had been no more to us
than a voice. ere was not a word from anybody. e others might have
been asleep, but I was awake. I listened, I listened on the watch for the
sentence, for the word, that would give me the clue to the faint uneasiness
inspired by this narrative that seemed to shape itself without human lips in
the heavy night-air of the river.
‘… Yes—I let him run on,’ Marlow began again, ‘and think what he
pleased about the powers that were behind me. I did! And there was
nothing behind me! ere was nothing but that wretched, old, mangled
steamboat I was leaning against, while he talked uently about ‘the
necessity for every man to get on.’ ‘And when one comes out here, you
conceive, it is not to gaze at the moon.’ Mr. Kurtz was a ‘universal genius,’
but even a genius would nd it easier to work with ‘adequate tools—
intelligent men.’ He did not make bricks—why, there was a physical
impossibility in the way—as I was well aware; and if he did secretarial work
for the manager, it was because ‘no sensible man rejects wantonly the
con dence of his superiors.’ Did I see it? I saw it. What more did I want?
What I really wanted was rivets, by heaven! Rivets. To get on with the work
—to stop the hole. Rivets I wanted. ere were cases of them down at the
coast— cases—piled up—burst—split! You kicked a loose rivet at every
second step in that station-yard on the hillside. Rivets had rolled into the
grove of death. You could ll your pockets with rivets for the trouble of
stooping down— and there wasn’t one rivet to be found where it was
wanted. We had plates that would do, but nothing to fasten them with.
And every week the messenger, a long negro, letter-bag on shoulder and
sta in hand, le our station for the coast. And several times a week a coast
caravan came in with trade goods—ghastly glazed calico that made you
shudder only to look at it, glass beads value about a penny a quart,
confounded spotted cotton handkerchiefs. And no rivets. ree carriers
could have brought all that was wanted to set that steamboat a oat.
‘He was becoming con dential 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. ere 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. ere was an old hippo
that had the bad habit of getting out on the bank and roaming at night over
the station grounds. e pilgrims used to turn out in a body and empty
every ri e they could lay hands on at him. Some even had sat up o’ nights
for him. All this energy was wasted, though. ‘ at 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 o . 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 in uential friend, the battered, twisted,
ruined, tin-pot steamboat. I clambered on board. She rang under my feet
like an empty Huntley & Palmer biscuit-tin kicked along a gutter; she was
nothing so solid in make, and rather less pretty in shape, but I had
expended enough hard work on her to make me love her. No in uential
friend would have served me better. She had given me a chance to come
out a bit—to nd out what I could do. No, I don’t like work. I had rather
laze about and think of all the ne things that can be done. I don’t like
work—no man does—but I like what is in the work— the chance to nd
yourself. Your own reality—for yourself, not for others—what no other
man can ever know. ey can only see the mere show, and never can tell
what it really means.
‘I was not surprised to see somebody sitting a , on the deck, with his legs
dangling over the mud. You see I rather chummed with the few mechanics
there were in that station, whom the other pilgrims naturally despised—on
account of their imperfect manners, I suppose. is was the foreman—a
boiler-maker by trade—a good worker. He was a lank, bony, yellow-faced
man, with big intense eyes. His aspect was worried, and his head was as
bald as the palm of my hand; but his hair in falling seemed to have stuck to
his chin, and had prospered in the new locality, for his beard hung down to
his waist. He was a widower with six young children (he had le them in
charge of a sister of his to come out there), and the passion of his life was
pigeon- ying. He was an enthusiast and a connoisseur. He would rave
about pigeons. A er work hours he used sometimes to come over from his
hut for a talk about his children and his pigeons; at work, when he had to
crawl in the mud under the bottom of the steamboat, he would tie up that
beard of his in a kind of white serviette he brought for the purpose. It had
loops to go over his ears. In the evening he could be seen squatted on the
bank rinsing that wrapper in the creek with great care, then spreading it
solemnly on a bush to dry.
‘I slapped him on the back and shouted, ‘We shall have rivets!’ He
scrambled to his feet exclaiming, ‘No! Rivets!’ as though he couldn’t believe
his ears. en in a low voice, ‘You … eh?’ I don’t know why we behaved
like lunatics. I put my nger to the side of my nose and nodded
mysteriously. ‘Good for you!’ he cried, snapped his ngers above his head,
li ing 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 gure obscured the
lighted doorway of the manager’s hut, vanished, then, a second or so a er,
the doorway itself vanished, too. We stopped, and the silence driven away
by the stamping of our feet owed back again from the recesses of the land.
e 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. ‘A er 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. ‘ ey’ll come in three weeks,’ I
said con dently.
‘But they didn’t. Instead of rivets there came an invasion, an in iction, a
visitation. It came in sections during the next three weeks, each section
headed by a donkey carrying a white man in new clothes and tan shoes,
bowing from that elevation right and le to the impressed pilgrims. A
quarrelsome band of footsore sulky niggers trod on the heels of the
donkey; a lot of tents, camp-stools, tin boxes, white cases, brown bales
would be shot down in the courtyard, and the air of mystery would deepen
a little over the muddle of the station. Five such instalments came, with
their absurd air of disorderly ight with the loot of innumerable out t
shops and provision stores, that, one would think, they were lugging, a er
a raid, into the wilderness for equitable division. It was an inextricable mess
of things decent in themselves but that human folly made look like the
spoils of thieving.
‘ is devoted band called itself the Eldorado Exploring Expedition, and I
believe they were sworn to secrecy. eir talk, however, was the talk of
sordid buccaneers: it ywas reckless without hardihood, greedy without
audacity, and cruel without courage; there was not an atom of foresight or
of serious intention in the whole batch of them, and they did not seem
aware these things are wanted for the work of the world. To tear treasure
out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose
at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe. Who paid the
expenses of the noble enterprise I don’t know; but the uncle of our
manager was leader of that lot.
‘In exterior he resembled a butcher in a poor neighbourhood, and his eyes
had a look of sleepy cunning. He carried his fat paunch with ostentation on
his short legs, and during the time his gang infested the station spoke to no
one but his nephew. You could see these two roaming about all day long
with their heads close together in an everlasting confab.
‘I had given up worrying myself about the rivets. One’s capacity for that
kind of folly is more limited than you would suppose. I said Hang!—and let
things slide. I had plenty of time for meditation, and now and then I would
give some thought to Kurtz. I wasn’t very interested in him. No. Still, I was
curious to see whether this man, who had come out equipped with moral
ideas of some sort, would climb to the top a er all and how he would set
about his work when there.’
II

‘O ne evening as I was lying at 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
in uence that man must have. Is it not frightful?’ ey both agreed it was
frightful, then made several bizarre remarks: ‘Make rain and ne 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, ‘ e climate may do away with this
di culty for you. Is he alone there?’ ‘Yes,’ answered the manager; ‘he sent
his assistant down the river with a note to me in these terms: ‘Clear this
poor devil out of the country, and don’t bother sending more of that sort. I
had rather be alone than have the kind of men you can dispose of with me.’
It was more than a year ago. Can you imagine such impudence!’ ‘Anything
since then?’ asked the other hoarsely. ‘Ivory,’ jerked the nephew; ‘lots of it—
prime sort—lots—most annoying, from him.’ ‘And with that?’ questioned
the heavy rumble. ‘Invoice,’ was the reply red out, so to speak. en
silence. ey had been talking about Kurtz.
‘I was broad awake by this time, but, lying perfectly at ease, remained still,
having no inducement to change my position. ‘How did that ivory come all
this way?’ growled the elder man, who seemed very vexed. e other
explained that it had come with a eet of canoes in charge of an English
half-caste clerk Kurtz had with him; that Kurtz had apparently intended to
return himself, the station being by that time bare of goods and stores, but
a er coming three hundred miles, had suddenly decided to go back, which
he started to do alone in a small dugout with four paddlers, leaving the
half-caste to continue down the river with the ivory. e two fellows there
seemed astounded at anybody attempting such a thing. ey were at a loss
for an adequate motive. As to me, I seemed to see Kurtz for the rst time. It
was a distinct glimpse: the dugout, four paddling savages, and the lone
white man turning his back suddenly on the headquarters, yon relief, on
thoughts of home—perhaps; setting his face towards the depths of the
wilderness, towards his empty and desolate station. I did not know the
motive. Perhaps he was just simply a ne fellow who stuck to his work for
its own sake. His name, you understand, had not been pronounced once.
He was ‘that man.’ e half-caste, who, as far as I could see, had conducted
a di cult trip with great prudence and pluck, was invariably alluded to as
‘that scoundrel.’ e ‘scoundrel’ had reported that the ‘man’ had been very
ill—had recovered imperfectly…. e 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.’ ey
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. at’s what I say; nobody here, you
understand, HERE, can endanger your position. And why? You stand the
climate—you outlast them all. e danger is in Europe; but there before I
le I took care to—’ ey moved o and whispered, then their voices rose
again. ‘ e extraordinary series of delays is not my fault. I did my best.’ e
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 li ed my head the least bit. I
was surprised to see how near they were—right under me. I could have
spat upon their hats. ey were looking on the ground, absorbed in
thought. e manager was switching his leg with a slender twig: his
sagacious relative li ed his head. ‘You have been well since you came out
this time?’ he asked. e other gave a start. ‘Who? I? Oh! Like a charm—
like a charm. But the rest—oh, my goodness! All sick. ey die so quick,
too, that I haven’t the time to send them out of the country— it’s
incredible!’ ‘Hm’m. Just so,’ grunted the uncle. ‘Ah! my boy, trust to this—I
say, trust to this.’ I saw him extend his short ipper of an arm for a gesture
that took in the forest, the creek, the mud, the river— seemed to beckon
with a dishonouring ourish before the sunlit face of the land a treacherous
appeal to the lurking death, to the hidden evil, to the profound darkness of
its heart. It was so startling that I leaped to my feet and looked back at the
edge of the forest, as though I had expected an answer of some sort to that
black display of con dence. You know the foolish notions that come to one
sometimes. e high stillness confronted these two gures with its ominous
patience, waiting for the passing away of a fantastic invasion.
‘ ey swore aloud together—out of sheer fright, I believe—then
pretending not to know anything of my existence, turned back to the
station. e sun was low; and leaning forward side by side, they seemed to
be tugging painfully uphill their two ridiculous shadows of unequal length,
that trailed behind them slowly over the tall grass without bending a single
blade.
‘In a few days the Eldorado Expedition went into the patient wilderness,
that closed upon it as the sea closes over a diver. Long a erwards the news
came that all the donkeys were dead. I know nothing as to the fate of the
less valuable animals. ey, no doubt, like the rest of us, found what they
deserved. I did not inquire. I was then rather excited at the prospect of
meeting Kurtz very soon. When I say very soon I mean it comparatively. It
was just two months from the day we le 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. e air was
warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. ere was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine.
e 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. e broadening waters owed 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 nd the channel, till
you thought yourself bewitched and cut o for ever from everything you
had known once—somewhere—far away—in another existence perhaps.
ere 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 a erwards; 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 ew out, when I shaved by a uke some infernal
sly old snag that would have ripped the life out of the tin-pot steamboat
and drowned all the pilgrims; I had to keep a lookout for the signs of dead
wood we could cut up in the night for next day’s steaming. When you have
to attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the
reality—the reality, I tell you—fades. e inner truth is hidden—luckily,
luckily. But I felt it all the same; I felt o en its mysterious stillness watching
me at my monkey tricks, just as it watches you fellows performing on your
respective tight-ropes for—what is it? half-a-crown a tumble—‘
‘Try to be civil, Marlow,’ growled a voice, and I knew there was at least
one listener awake besides myself.
‘I beg your pardon. I forgot the heartache which makes up the rest of the
price. And indeed what does the price matter, if the trick be well done?
You do your tricks very well. And I didn’t do badly either, since I managed
not to sink that steamboat on my rst trip. It’s a wonder to me yet. Imagine
a blindfolded man set to drive a van over a bad road. I sweated and
shivered over that business considerably, I can tell you. A er all, for a
seaman, to scrape the bottom of the thing that’s supposed to oat all the
time under his care is the unpardonable sin. No one may know of it, but
you never forget the thump—eh? A blow on the very heart. You remember
it, you dream of it, you wake up at night and think of it—years a er—and
go hot and cold all over. I don’t pretend to say that steamboat oated all the
time. More than once she had to wade for a bit, with twenty cannibals
splashing around and pushing. We had enlisted some of these chaps on the
way for a crew. Fine fellows—cannibals—in their place. ey were men one
could work with, and I am grateful to them. And, a er all, they did not eat
each other before my face: they had brought along a provision of hippo-
meat which went rotten, and made the mystery of the wilderness stink in
my nostrils. Phoo! I can sni 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. e 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 oor of a lo y portico. It
made you feel very small, very lost, and yet it was not altogether
depressing, that feeling. A er 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. e 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 rst break of day. Whether it meant war, peace, or prayer we
could not tell. e dawns were heralded by the descent of a chill stillness;
the wood-cutters slept, their res burned low; the snapping of a twig would
make you start. Were were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth
that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fancied
ourselves the rst of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to
be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil. But
suddenly, as we struggled round a bend, there would be a glimpse of rush
walls, of peaked grass-roofs, a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass
of hands clapping. of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling,
under the droop of heavy and motionless foliage. e steamer toiled along
slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy. e prehistoric
man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us—who could tell? We were
cut o from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like
phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before
an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. We could not understand because
we were too far and could not remember because we were travelling in the
night of rst ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign— and
no memories.
‘ e earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the
shackled form of a conquered monster, but there— there you could look at
a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were—No, they
were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it—this suspicion
of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. ey howled and
leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the
thought of their humanity— like yours—the thought of your remote
kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough;
but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there ywas
in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that
noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you—you so
remote from the night of rst ages—could comprehend. And why not? e
mind of man is capable of anything—because everything is in it, all the past
as well as all the future. What was there a er 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 stu — with his
own inborn strength. Principles won’t do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags
—rags that would y o at the rst good shake. No; you want a deliberate
belief. An appeal to me in this endish 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 ne
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. ere was
surface-truth enough in these things to save a wiser man. And between
whiles I had to look a er the savage who was reman. He was an improved
specimen; he could re 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 ne chap. He squinted at the steam-gauge
and at the water-gauge with an evident e ort of intrepidity—and he had
led teeth, too, the poor devil, and the wool of his pate shaved into queer
patterns, and three ornamental scars on each of his cheeks. He ought to
have been clapping his hands and stamping his feet on the bank, instead of
which he was hard at work, a thrall to strange witchcra , full of improving
knowledge. He was useful because he had been instructed; and what he
knew was this—that should the water in that transparent thing disappear,
the evil spirit inside the boiler would get angry through the greatness of his
thirst, and take a terrible vengeance. So he sweated and red up and
watched the glass fearfully (with an impromptu charm, made of rags, tied
to his arm, and a piece of polished bone, as big as a watch, stuck atways
through his lower lip), while the wooded banks slipped past us slowly, the
short noise was le behind, the interminable miles of silence—and we crept
on, towards Kurtz. But the snags were thick, the water was treacherous and
shallow, the boiler seemed indeed to have a sulky devil in it, and thus
neither that reman nor I had any time to peer into our creepy thoughts.
‘Some y miles below the Inner Station we came upon a hut of reeds, an
inclined and melancholy pole, with the unrecognizable tatters of what had
been a ag of some sort ying from it, and a neatly stacked wood-pile. is
was unexpected. We came to the bank, and on the stack of rewood found
a at piece of board with some faded pencil-writing on it. When
deciphered it said: ‘Wood for you. Hurry up. Approach cautiously.’ ere
was a signature, but it was illegible—not Kurtz—a much longer word.
‘Hurry up.’ Where? Up the river? ‘Approach cautiously.’ We had not done so.
But the warning could not have been meant for the place where it could be
only found a er approach. Something was wrong above. But what—and
how much? at was the question. We commented adversely upon the
imbecility of that telegraphic style. e 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 apped sadly in our faces. e dwelling was
dismantled; but we could see a white man had lived there not very long
ago. ere 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
so ness; but the back had been lovingly stitched afresh with white cotton
thread, which looked clean yet. It was an extraordinary nd. Its title was,
AN INQUIRY INTO SOME POINTS OF SEAMANSHIP, by a man Towser,
Towson—some such name—Master in his Majesty’s Navy. e matter
looked dreary reading enough, with illustrative diagrams and repulsive
tables of gures, 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 rst 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. e 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! ey were in cipher! Yes, it looked like cipher.
Fancy a man lugging with him a book of that description into this nowhere
and studying it—and making notes—in cipher at that! It was an extravagant
mystery.
‘I had been dimly aware for some time of a worrying noise, and when I
li ed my eyes I saw the wood-pile was gone, and the manager, aided by all
the pilgrims, was shouting at me from the riverside. I slipped the book into
my pocket. I assure you to leave o reading was like tearing myself away
from the shelter of an old and solid friendship.
 ‘I started the lame engine ahead. ‘It must be this miserable trader-this
intruder,’ exclaimed the manager, looking back malevolently at the place we
had le . ‘He must be English,’ I said. ‘It will not save him from getting into
trouble if he is not careful,’ muttered the manager darkly. I observed with
assumed innocence that no man was safe from trouble in this world.
‘ e current was more rapid now, the steamer seemed at her last gasp, the
stern-wheel opped languidly, and I caught myself listening on tiptoe for
the next beat of the boat, for in sober truth I expected the wretched thing
to give up every moment. It was like watching the last ickers of a life. But
still we crawled. Sometimes I would pick out a tree a little way ahead to
measure our progress towards Kurtz by, but I lost it invariably before we got
abreast. To keep the eyes so long on one thing was too much for human
patience. e manager displayed a beautiful resignation. I fretted and
fumed and took to arguing with myself whether or no I would talk openly
with Kurtz; but before I could come to any conclusion it occurred to me
that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere
futility. What did it matter what any one knew or ignored? What did it
matter who was manager? One gets sometimes such a ash of insight. e
essentials of this a air lay deep under the surface, beyond my reach, and
beyond my power of meddling.
‘Towards the evening of the second day we judged ourselves about eight
miles from Kurtz’s station. I wanted to push on; but the manager looked
grave, and told me the navigation up there was so dangerous that it would
be advisable, the sun being very low already, to wait where we were till
next morning. Moreover, he pointed out that if the warning to approach
cautiously were to be followed, we must approach in daylight— not at dusk
or in the dark. is 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 a er so many months. As we had plenty of wood, and caution was
the word, I brought up in the middle of the stream. e reach was narrow,
straight, with high sides like a railway cutting. e dusk came gliding into it
long before the sun had set. e current ran smooth and swi , but a dumb
immobility sat on the banks. e 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 sh leaped, and
the loud splash made me jump as though a gun had been red. When the
sun rose there was a white fog, very warm and clammy, and more blinding
than the night. It did not shi or drive; it was just there, standing all round
you like something solid. At eight or nine, perhaps, it li ed as a shutter li s.
We had a glimpse of the towering multitude of trees, of the immense
matted jungle, with the blazing little ball of the sun hanging over it—all
perfectly still—and then the white shutter came down again, smoothly, as if
sliding in greased grooves. I ordered the chain, which we had begun to
heave in, to be paid out again. Before it stopped running with a mu ed
rattle, a cry, a very loud cry, as of in nite desolation, soared slowly in the
opaque air. It ceased. A complaining clamour, modulated in savage
discords, lled our ears. e sheer unexpectedness of it made my hair stir
under my cap. I don’t know how it struck the others: to me it seemed as
though the mist itself had screamed, so suddenly, and apparently from all
sides at once, did this tumultuous and mournful uproar arise. It culminated
in a hurried outbreak of almost intolerably excessive shrieking, which
stopped short, leaving us sti ened in a variety of silly attitudes, and
obstinately listening to the nearly as appalling and excessive silence. ‘Good
God! What is the meaning—’ stammered at my elbow one of the pilgrims—
a little fat man, with sandy hair and red whiskers, who wore sidespring
boots, and pink pyjamas tucked into his socks. Two others remained open-
mouthed a while minute, then dashed into the little cabin, to rush out
incontinently and stand darting scared glances, with Winchesters at ‘ready’
in their hands. What we could see was just the steamer we were on, her
outlines blurred as though she had been on the point of dissolving, and a
misty strip of water, perhaps two feet broad, around her— and that was all.
e rest of the world was nowhere, as far as our eyes and ears were
concerned. Just nowhere. Gone, disappeared; swept o without leaving a
whisper or a shadow behind.
‘I went forward, and ordered the chain to be hauled in short, so as to be
ready to trip the anchor and move the steamboat at once if necessary. ‘Will
they attack?’ whispered an awed voice. ‘We will be all butchered in this fog,’
murmured another. e 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. e whites, of course greatly
discomposed, had besides a curious look of being painfully shocked by such
an outrageous row. e 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. eir
headman, a young, broad-chested black, severely draped in dark-blue
fringed cloths, with erce 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 ash 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 digni ed and profoundly pensive attitude. I
would no doubt have been properly horri ed, 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. ey 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. ey still belonged to
the beginnings of time—had no inherited experience to teach them as it
were), and of course, as long as there was a piece of paper written over in
accordance with some farcical law or other made down the river, it didn’t
enter anybody’s head to trouble how they would live. Certainly they had
brought with them some rotten hippo-meat, which couldn’t have lasted
very long, anyway, even if the pilgrims hadn’t, in the midst of a shocking
hullabaloo, thrown a considerable quantity of it overboard. It looked like a
high-handed proceeding; but it was really a case of legitimate self-defence.
You can’t breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping, and eating, and at the same
time keep your precarious grip on existence. Besides that, they had given
them every week three pieces of brass wire, each about nine inches long;
and the theory was they were to buy their provisions with that currency in
riverside villages. You can see how THAT worked. ere were either no
villages, or the people were hostile, or the director, who like the rest of us
fed out of tins, with an occasional old he-goat thrown in, didn’t want to
stop the steamer for some more or less recondite reason. So, unless they
swallowed the wire itself, or made loops of it to snare the shes with, I
don’t see what good their extravagant salary could be to them. I must say it
was paid with a regularity worthy of a large and honourable trading
company. For the rest, the only thing to eat—though it didn’t look eatable
in the least—I saw in their possession was a few lumps of some stu like
half-cooked dough, of a dirty lavender colour, they kept wrapped in leaves,
and now and then swallowed a piece of, but so small that it seemed done
more for the looks of the thing than for any serious purpose of sustenance.
Why in the name of all the gnawing devils of hunger they didn’t go for us—
they were thirty to ve—and have a good tuck-in for once, amazes me now
when I think of it. ey were big powerful men, with not much capacity to
weigh the consequences, with courage, with strength, even yet, though
their skins were no longer glossy and their muscles no longer hard. And I
saw that something restraining, one of those human secrets that ba e
probability, had come into play there. I looked at them with a swi
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 tted 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 nger everlastingly on one’s pulse. I
had o en ‘a little fever,’ or a little touch of other things— the playful paw-
strokes of the wilderness, the preliminary tri ing 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 cha 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 ght
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 battle eld. But there was the fact facing
me—the fact dazzling, to be seen, like the foam on the depths of the sea,
like a ripple on an unfathomable enigma, a mystery greater—when I
thought of it— than the curious, inexplicable note of desperate grief in this
savage clamour that had swept by us on the river-bank, behind the blind
whiteness of the fog.
‘Two pilgrims were quarrelling in hurried whispers as to which bank.
‘Le .’ ‘no, no; how can you? Right, right, of course.’ ‘It is very serious,’ said
the manager’s voice behind me; ‘I would be desolated if anything should
happen to Mr. Kurtz before we came up.’ I looked at him, and had not the
slightest doubt he was sincere. He was just the kind of man who would
wish to preserve appearances. at was his restraint. But when he muttered
something about going on at once, I did not even take the trouble to
answer him. I knew, and he knew, that it was impossible. Were we to let go
our hold of the bottom, we would be absolutely in the air—in space. We
wouldn’t be able to tell where we were going to—whether up or down
stream, or across—till we fetched against one bank or the other—and then
we wouldn’t know at rst which it was. Of course I made no move. I had
no mind for a smash-up. You couldn’t imagine a more deadly place for a
shipwreck. Whether we drowned at once or not, we were sure to perish
speedily in one way or another. ‘I authorize you to take all the risks,’ he
said, a er a short silence. ‘I refuse to take any,’ I said shortly; which was just
the answer he expected, though its tone might have surprised him. ‘Well, I
must defer to your judgment. You are captain,’ he said with marked civility.
I turned my shoulder to him in sign of my appreciation, and looked into
the fog. How long would it last? It was the most hopeless lookout. e
approach to this Kurtz grubbing for ivory in the wretched bush was beset by
as many dangers as though he had been an enchanted princess sleeping in
a fabulous castle. ‘Will they attack, do you think?’ asked the manager, in a
con dential tone.
‘I did not think they would attack, for several obvious reasons. e thick
fog was one. If they le 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. e riverside bushes were certainly very thick; but the undergrowth
behind was evidently penetrable. However, during the short li 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. ey had not the erce character boding
immediate hostile intention. Unexpected, wild, and violent as they had
been, they had given me an irresistible impression of sorrow. e glimpse of
the steamboat had for some reason lled those savages with unrestrained
grief. e 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! ey 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 li ing 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, sti ing. Besides, all I said,
though it sounded extravagant, was absolutely true to fact. What we
a erwards alluded to as an attack was really an attempt at repulse. e
action was very far from being aggressive—it was not even defensive, in the
usual sense: it was undertaken under the stress of desperation, and in its
essence was purely protective.
‘It developed itself, I should say, two hours a er the fog li ed, and its
commencement was at a spot, roughly speaking, about a mile and a half
below Kurtz’s station. We had just oundered and opped round a bend,
when I saw an islet, a mere grassy hummock of bright green, in the middle
of the stream. It was the ony thing of the kind; but as we opened the reach
more, I perceived it was the head of a long sand-bank, or rather of a chain
of shallow patches stretching down the middle of the river. ey were
discoloured, just awash, and the whole lot was seen just under the water,
exactly as a man’s backbone is seen running down the middle of his back
under the skin. Now, as far as I did see, I could go to the right or to the le
of this. I didn’t know either channel, of course. e banks looked pretty
well alike, the depth appeared the same; but as I had been informed the
station was on the west side, I naturally headed for the western passage.
‘No sooner had we fairly entered it than I became aware it was much
narrower than I had supposed. To the le of us there was the long
uninterrupted shoal, and to the right a high, steep bank heavily overgrown
with bushes. Above the bush the trees stood in serried ranks. e twigs
overhung the current thickly, and from distance to distance a large limb of
some tree projected rigidly over the stream. It was then well on in the
a ernoon, the face of the forest was gloomy, and a broad strip of shadow
had already fallen on the water. In this shadow we steamed up—very
slowly, as you may imagine. I sheered her well inshore—the water being
deepest near the bank, as the sounding-pole informed me.
‘One of my hungry and forbearing friends was sounding in the bows just
below me. is steamboat was exactly like a decked scow. On the deck,
there were two little teakwood houses, with doors and windows. e boiler
was in the fore-end, and the machinery right astern. yOver the whole there
was a light roof, supported on stanchions. e 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 at 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 reman, whom I
could also see below me, sat down abruptly before his furnace and ducked
his head. I was amazed. en I had to look at the river mighty quick,
because there was a snag in the fairway. Sticks, little sticks, were ying
about—thick: they were whizzing before my nose, dropping below me,
striking behind me against my pilot-house. All this time the river, the shore,
the woods, were very quiet— perfectly quiet. I could only hear the heavy
splashing thump of the stern-wheel and the patter of these things. We
cleared the snag clumsily. Arrows, by Jove! We were being shot at! I
stepped in quickly to close the shutter on the landside. at fool-
helmsman, his hands on the spokes, was li ing his knees high, stamping his
feet, champing his mouth, like a reined-in horse. Confound him! And we
were staggering within ten feet of the bank. I had to lean right out to swing
the heavy shutter, and I saw a face amongst the leaves on the level with my
own, looking at me very erce and steady; and then suddenly, as though a
veil had been removed from my eyes, I made out, deep in the tangled
gloom, naked breasts, arms, legs, glaring eyes— the bush was swarming
with human limbs in movement, glistening. of bronze colour. e twigs
shook, swayed, and rustled, the arrows ew out of them, and then the
shutter came to. ‘Steer her straight,’ I said to the helmsman. He held his
head rigid, face forward; but his eyes rolled, he kept on li ing and setting
down his feet gently, his mouth foamed a little. ‘Keep quiet!’ I said in a
fury. I might just as well have ordered a tree not to sway in the wind. I
darted out. Below me there was a great scu e of feet on the iron deck;
confused exclamations; a voice screamed, ‘Can you turn back?’ I caught
sight of a V-shaped ripple on the water ahead. What? Another snag! A
fusillade burst out under my feet. e pilgrims had opened with their
Winchesters, and were simply squirting lead into that bush. A deuce of a
lot of smoke came up and drove slowly forward. I swore at it. Now I
couldn’t see the ripple or the snag either. I stood in the doorway, peering,
and the arrows came in swarms. ey might have been poisoned, but they
looked as though they wouldn’t kill a cat. e bush began to howl. Our
wood-cutters raised a warlike whoop; the report of a ri e 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. e fool-nigger had
dropped everything, to throw the shutter open and let o 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.
ere 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 ying leaves. e 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 ri e
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 ri e went overboard, and the man stepped
back swi ly, looked at me over his shoulder in an extraordinary, profound,
familiar manner, and fell upon my feet. e 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 a er wrenching that
thing from somebody ashore he had lost his balance in the e ort. e thin
smoke had blown away, we were clear of the snag, and looking ahead I
could see that in another hundred yards or so I would be free to sheer o ,
away from the bank; but my feet felt so very warm and wet that I had to
look down. e man had rolled on his back and stared straight up at me;
both his hands clutched that cane. It was the sha of a spear that, either
thrown or lunged through the opening, had caught him in the side, just
below the ribs; the blade had gone in out of sight, a er making a frightful
gash; my shoes were full; a pool of blood lay very still, gleaming dark-red
under the wheel; his eyes shone with an amazing lustre. e fusillade burst
out again. He looked at me anxiously, gripping the spear like something
precious, with an air of being afraid I would try to take it away from him. I
had to make an e ort to free my eyes from his gaze and attend to the
steering. With one hand I felt above my head for the line of the steam
whistle, and jerked out screech a er screech hurriedly. e tumult of angry
and warlike yells was checked instantly, and then from the depths of the
woods went out such a tremulous and prolonged wail of mournful fear and
utter despair as may be imagined to follow the ight of the last hope from
the earth. ere was a great commotion in the bush; the shower of arrows
stopped, a few dropping shots rang out sharply—then silence, in which the
languid beat of the stern-wheel came plainly to my ears. I put the helm
hard a-starboard at the moment when the pilgrim in pink pyjamas, very
hot and agitated, appeared in the doorway. ‘ e manager sends me—’ he
began in an o cial tone, and stopped short. ‘Good God!’ he said, glaring at
the wounded man.
‘We two whites stood over him, and his lustrous and inquiring glance
enveloped us both. I declare it looked as though he would presently put to
us some questions in an understandable language; but he died without
uttering a sound, without moving a limb, without twitching a muscle. Only
in the very last moment, as though in response to some sign we could not
see, to some whisper we could not hear, he frowned heavily, and that
frown gave to his black death-mask an inconeivably sombre, brooding, and
menacing expression. e lustre of inquiring glance faded swi ly 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. ere was a sense of
extreme disappointment, as though I had found out I had been striving
a er 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 ung 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.’ e 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? at was
not the point. e point was in his being a gi ed creature, and that of all
his gi s the one that stood out preeminently, that carried with it a sense of
real presence, was his ability to talk, his words— the gi of expression, the
bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible,
the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful ow from the heart of an
impenetrable darkness.
‘ e other shoe went ying unto the devil-god of that river. I thought, ‘By
Jove! it’s all over. We are too late; he has vanished— the gi has vanished,
by means of some spear, arrow, or club. I will never hear that chap speak
a er all’—and my sorrow had a startling extravagance of emotion, even
such as I had noticed in the howling sorrow of these savages in the bush. I
couldn’t have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of
a belief or had missed my destiny in life. … Why do you sigh in this beastly
way, somebody? Absurd? Well, absurd. Good Lord! mustn’t a man ever—
Here, give me some tobacco.’ …
ere was a pause of profound stillness, then a match ared, and
Marlow’s lean face appeared, worn, hollow, with downward folds and
dropped eyelids, with an aspect of concentrated attention; and as he took
vigorous draws at his pipe, it seemed to retreat and advance out of the
night in the regular icker of tiny ame. e match went out.
‘Absurd!’ he cried. ‘ is is the worst of trying to tell. … Here you all are,
each moored with two good addresses, like a hulk with two anchors, a
butcher round one corner, a policeman round another, excellent appetites,
and temperature normal—you hear—normal from year’s end to year’s end.
And you say, Absurd! Absurd be—exploded! Absurd! My dear boys, what
can you expect from a man who out of sheer nervousness had just ung
overboard a pair of new shoes! Now I think of it, it is amazing I did not
shed tears. I am, upon the whole, proud of my fortitude. I was cut to the
quick at the idea of having lost the inestimable privilege of listening to the
gi ed Kurtz. Of course I was wrong. e 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 gi s at last with a lie,’ he began, suddenly. ‘Girl!
What? Did I mention a girl? Oh, she is out of it—completely. ey—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 lo y frontal bone of Mr. Kurtz! ey
say the hair goes on growing sometimes, but this— ah—specimen, was
impressively bald. e 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 esh, 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. e
old mud shanty was bursting with it. You would think there was not a
single tusk le either above or below the ground in the whole country.
‘Mostly fossil,’ the manager had remarked, disparagingly. It was no more
fossil than I am; but they call it fossil when it is dug up. It appears these
niggers do bury the tusks sometimes— but evidently they couldn’t bury this
parcel deep enough to save the gi ed Mr. Kurtz from his fate. We lled the
steamboat with it, and had to pile a lot on the deck. us he could see and
enjoy as long as he could see, because the appreciation of this favour had
remained with him to the last. You should have heard him say, ‘My ivory.’
Oh, yes, I heard him. ‘My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my—’
everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of
hearing the wilderness burst into a prodigious peal of laughter that would
shake the xed stars in their places. Everything belonged to him— but that
was a tri e. e thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers
of darkness claimed him for their own. at was the re ection that made
you creepy all over. It was impossible—it was not good for one either—
trying to imagine. He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land
— I mean literally. You can’t understand. How could you?— with solid
pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbours ready to cheer
you or to fall on you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the
policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums—
how can you imagine what particular region of the rst ages a man’s
untrammelled feet may take him into by the way of solitude—utter solitude
without a policeman— by the way of silence—utter silence, where no
warning voice of a kind neighbour can be heard whispering of public
opinion? ese little things make all the great di erence. When they are
gone you must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your own
capacity for faithfulness. Of course you may be too much of a fool to go
wrong— too dull even to know you are being assaulted by the powers of
darkness. I take it, no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the devil;
the fool is too much of a fool, or the devil too much of a devil—I don’t
know which. Or you may be such a thunderingly exalted creature as to be
altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and sounds. en
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. e 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 stu in— your power of devotion, not to yourself, but to an
obscure, back-breaking business. And that’s di cult 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. is initiated wraith from the
back of Nowhere honoured me with its amazing con dence before it
vanished altogether. is was because it could speak English to me. e
original Kurtz had been educated partly in England, and—as he was good
enough to say himself—his sympathies were in the right place. His mother
was half-English, his father was half-French. All Europe contributed to the
making of Kurtz; and by and by I learned that, most appropriately, the
International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs had intrusted
him with the making of a report, for its future guidance. And he had
written it, too. I’ve seen it. I’ve read it. It was eloquent, vibrating with
eloquence, but too high-strung, I think. Seventeen pages of close writing he
had found time for! But this must have been before his—let us say—
nerves, went wrong, and caused him to preside at certain midnight dances
ending with unspeakable rites, which—as far as I reluctantly gathered from
what I heard at various times—were o ered up to him— do you
understand?—to Mr. Kurtz himself. But it was a beautiful piece of writing.
e opening paragraph, however, in the light of later information, strikes
me now as ominous. He began with the argument that we whites, from the
point of development we had arrived at, ‘must necessarily appear to them
[savages] in the nature of supernatural beings— we approach them with
the might of a deity,’ and so on, and so on. ‘By the simple exercise of our
will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded,’ etc., etc. From
that point he soared and took me with him. e peroration was
magni cent, though di cult to remember, you know. It gave me the notion
of an exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence. It made me tingle
with enthusiasm. is was the unbounded power of eloquence—of words
—of burning noble words. ere were no practical hints to interrupt the
magic current of phrases, unless a kind of note at the foot of the last page,
scrawled evidently much later, in an unsteady hand, may be regarded as
the exposition of a method. It was very simple, and at the end of that
moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and
terrifying, like a ash of lightning in a serene sky: ‘Exterminate all the
brutes!’ e curious part was that he had apparently forgotten all about that
valuable postscriptum, because, later on, when he in a sense came to
himself, he repeatedly entreated me to take good care of ‘my pamphlet’ (he
called it), as it was sure to have in the future a good in uence upon his
career. I had full information about all these things, and, besides, as it
turned out, I was to have the care of his memory. I’ve done enough for it to
give me the indisputable right to lay it, if I choose, for an everlasting rest in
the dust-bin of progress, amongst all the sweepings and, guratively
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 ll 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 a rm 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 a er him, I worried about his de ciencies,
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 a rmed in a supreme moment.
‘Poor fool! If he had only le 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, a er rst 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, heavy; heavier than any man on earth, I should imagine. en
without more ado I tipped him overboard. e current snatched him as
though he had been a wisp of grass, and I saw the body roll over twice
before I lost sight of it for ever. All the pilgrims and the manager were then
congregated on the awning-deck about the pilot-house, chattering at each
other like a ock of excited magpies, and there was a scandalized murmur
at my heartless promptitude. What they wanted to keep that body hanging
about for I can’t guess. Embalm it, maybe. But I had also heard another,
and a very ominous, murmur on the deck below. My friends the wood-
cutters were likewise scandalized, and with a better show of reason—
though I admit that the reason itself was quite inadmissible. Oh, quite! I
had made up my mind that if my late helmsman was to be eaten, the shes
alone should have him. He had been a very second-rate helmsman while
alive, but now he was dead he might have become a rst-class temptation,
and possibly cause some startling trouble. Besides, I was anxious to take the
wheel, the man in pink pyjamas showing himself a hopeless du er at the
business.
‘ is I did directly the simple funeral was over. We were going half-speed,
keeping right in the middle of the stream, and I listened to the talk about
me. ey had given up Kurtz, they had given up the station; Kurtz was
dead, and the station had been burnt—and so on—and so on. e red-
haired pilgrim was beside himself with the thought that at least this poor
Kurtz had been properly avenged. ‘Say! We must have made a glorious
slaughter of them in the bush. Eh? What do you think? Say?’ He positively
danced, the bloodthirsty little gingery beggar. And he had nearly fainted
when he saw the wounded man! I could not help saying, ‘You made a
glorious lot of smoke, anyhow.’ I had seen, from the way the tops of the
bushes rustled and ew, that almost all the shots had gone too high. You
can’t hit anything unless you take aim and re from the shoulder; but these
chaps red from the hip with their eyes shut. e 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.
‘ e manager stood by the wheel murmuring con dentially 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. ‘ e station!’ he cried. I edged in at once, still going half-speed.
‘ rough 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.
ere 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. e rails, or whatever there had been between, had
disappeared. Of course the forest surrounded all that. e 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 dri down. e man on the shore began to
shout, urging us to land. ‘We have been attacked,’ screamed the manager. ‘I
know—I know. It’s all right,’ yelled back the other, as cheerful as you please.
‘Come along. It’s all right. I am glad.’
‘His aspect reminded me of something I had seen—something funny I
had seen somewhere. As I manoeuvred to get alongside, I was asking
myself, ‘What does this fellow look like?’ Suddenly I got it. He looked like a
harlequin. His clothes had been made of some stu that was brown holland
probably, but it was covered with patches all over, with bright patches, blue,
red, and yellow—patches on the back, patches on the front, patches on
elbows, on knees; coloured binding around his jacket, scarlet edging at the
bottom of his trousers; and the sunshine made him look extremely gay and
wonderfully neat withal, because you could see how beautifully all this
patching had been done. A beardless, boyish face, very fair, no features to
speak of, nose peeling, little blue eyes, smiles and frowns chasing each
other over that open countenance like sunshine and shadow on a wind-
swept plain. ‘Look out, captain!’ he cried; ‘there’s a snag lodged in here last
night.’ What! Another snag? I confess I swore shamefully. I had nearly
holed my cripple, to nish o that charming trip. e harlequin on the
bank turned his little pug-nose up to me. ‘You English?’ he asked, all
smiles. ‘Are you?’ I shouted from the wheel. e smiles vanished, and he
shook his head as if sorry for my disappointment. en he brightened up.
‘Never mind!’ he cried encouragingly. ‘Are we in time?’ I asked. ‘He is up
there,’ he replied, with a toss of the head up the hill, and becoming gloomy
all of a sudden. His face was like the autumn sky, overcast one moment
and bright the next.
‘When the manager, escorted by the pilgrims, all of them armed to the
teeth, had gone to the house this chap came on board. ‘I say, I don’t like
this. ese natives are in the bush,’ I said. He assured me earnestly it was all
right. ‘ ey are simple people,’ he added; ‘well, I am glad you came. It took
me all my time to keep them o .’ ‘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.’ en 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 ri es. ey 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?’
 ‘ e 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 solemn and reproachful. I held my
tongue a er that. It appears he had persuaded a Dutch trading-house on
the coast to t him out with stores and goods, and had started for the
interior with a light heart and no more idea of what would happen to him
than a baby. He had been wandering about that river for nearly two years
alone, cut o from everybody and everything. ‘I am not so young as I look.
I am twenty- ve,’ he said. ‘At rst old Van Shuyten would tell me to go to
the devil,’ he narrated with keen enjoyment; ‘but I stuck to him, and talked
and talked, till at last he got afraid I would talk the hind-leg o his
favourite dog, so he gave me some cheap things and a few guns, and told
me he hoped he would never see my face again. Good old Dutchman, Van
Shuyten. I’ve sent him one small lot of ivory a year ago, so that he can’t call
me a little thief when I get back. I hope he got it. And for the rest I don’t
care. I had some wood stacked for you. at was my old house. Did you
see?’
‘I gave him Towson’s book. He made as though he would kiss me, but
restrained himself. ‘ e only book I had le , and I thought I had lost it,’ he
said, looking at it ecstatically. ‘So many accidents happen to a man going
about alone, you know. Canoes get upset sometimes—and sometimes
you’ve got to clear out so quick when the people get angry.’ He thumbed the
pages. ‘You made notes in Russian?’ I asked. He nodded. ‘I thought they
were written in cipher,’ I said. He laughed, then became serious. ‘I had lots
of trouble to keep these people o ,’ he said. ‘Did they want to kill you?’ I
asked. ‘Oh, no!’ he cried, and checked himself. ‘Why did they attack us?’ I
pursued. He hesitated, then said shamefacedly, ‘ ey don’t want him to go.’
‘Don’t they?’ I said curiously. He nodded a nod full of mystery and wisdom.
‘I tell you,’ he cried, ‘this man has enlarged my mind.’ He opened his arms
wide, staring at me with his little blue eyes that were perfectly round.’
III

‘I looked at him, lost in astonishment. ere 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.’ e 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 unre ecting
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 ame. 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 through these things. I did
not envy him his devotion to Kurtz, though. He had not meditated over it.
It came to him, and he accepted it with a sort of eager fatalism. I must say
that to me it appeared about the most dangerous thing in every way he had
come upon so far.
‘ ey had come together unavoidably, like two ships becalmed near each
other, and lay rubbing sides at last. I suppose Kurtz wanted an audience,
because on a certain occasion, when encamped in the forest, they had
talked all night, or more probably Kurtz had talked. ‘We talked of
everything,’ he said, quite transported at the recollection. ‘I forgot there was
such a thing as sleep. e night did not seem to last an hour. Everything!
Everything! … Of love, too.’ ‘Ah, he talked to you of love!’ I said, much
amused. ‘It isn’t what you think,’ he cried, almost passionately. ‘It was in
general. He made me see things—things.’
‘He threw his arms up. We were on deck at the time, and the headman of
my wood-cutters, lounging near by, turned upon him his heavy and
glittering eyes. I looked around, and I don’t know why, but I assure you
that never, never before, did this land, this river, this jungle, the very arch
of this blazing sky, appear to me so hopeless and so dark, so impenetrable
to human thought, so pitiless to human weakness. ‘And, ever since, you
have been with him, of course?’ I said.
‘On the contrary. It appears their intercourse had been very much broken
by various causes. He had, as he informed me proudly, managed to nurse
Kurtz through two illnesses (he alluded to it as you would to some risky
feat), but as a rule Kurtz wandered alone, far in the depths of the forest.
‘Very o en coming to this station, I had to wait days and days before he
would 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. ‘ ere’s a good lot of cartridges le 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 dgeted a
little. ‘ ey adored him,’ he said. e 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. e man lled 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. A erwards I had to keep out of the way; but I didn’t mind. He
was living for the most part in those villages on the lake. When he came
down to the river, sometimes he would take to me, and sometimes it was
better for me to be careful. is man su ered too much. He hated all this,
and somehow he couldn’t get away. When I had a chance I begged him to
try and leave while there was time; I o ered to go back with him. And he
would say yes, and then he would remain; go o on another ivory hunt;
disappear for weeks; forget himself amongst these people— forget himself—
you know.’ ‘Why! he’s mad,’ I said. He protested indignantly. Mr. Kurtz
couldn’t be mad. If I had heard him talk, only two days ago, I wouldn’t dare
hint at such a thing. … I had taken up my binoculars while we talked, and
was looking at the shore, sweeping the limit of the forest at each side and at
the back of the house. e consciousness of there being people in that
bush, so silent, so quiet—as silent and quiet as the ruined house on the hill
— made me uneasy. ere was no sign on the face of nature of this
amazing tale that was not so much told as suggested to me in desolate
exclamations, completed by shrugs, in interrupted phrases, in hints ending
in deep sighs. e woods were unmoved, like a mask—heavy, like the
closed door of a prison—they looked with their air of hidden knowledge, of
patient expectation, of unapproachable silence. e Russian was explaining
to me that it was only lately that Mr. Kurtz had come down to the river,
bringing along with him all the ghting men of that lake tribe. He had been
absent for several months—getting himself adored, I suppose— and had
come down unexpectedly, with the intention to all appearance of making a
raid either across the river or down stream. Evidently the appetite for more
ivory had got the better of the— what shall I say?—less material aspirations.
However he had got much worse suddenly. ‘I heard he was lying 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. ere 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 eld 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 rst result was to
make me throw my head back as if before a blow. en I went carefully
from post to post with my glass, and I saw my mistake. ese 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. ey would have been even more
impressive, those heads on the stakes, if their faces had not been turned to
the house. Only one, the rst I had made out, was facing my way. I was not
so shocked as you may think. e 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 rst 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 a erwards
that Mr. Kurtz’s methods had ruined the district. I have no opinion on that
point, but I want you clearly to understand that there was nothing exactly
pro table in these heads being there. ey only showed that Mr. Kurtz
lacked restraint in the grati cation of his various lusts, that there was
something wanting in him— some small matter which, when the pressing
need arose, could not be found under his magni cent eloquence. Whether
he knew of this de ciency himself I can’t say. I think the knowledge came
to him at last—only at the very last. But the wilderness had found him out
early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion.
I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not
know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this
great solitude—and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It
echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core…. I put down
the glass, and the head that had appeared near enough to be spoken to
seemed at once to have leaped away from me into inaccessible distance.
‘ e admirer of Mr. Kurtz was a bit crestfallen. In a hurried, indistinct
voice he began to assure me he had not dared to take these—say, symbols
—down. He was not afraid of the natives; they would not stir till Mr. Kurtz
gave the word. His ascendancy was extraordinary. e camps of these
people surrounded the place, and the chiefs came every day to see him.
ey would crawl…. ‘I don’t want to know anything of the ceremonies used
when approaching Mr. Kurtz,’ I shouted. Curious, this feeling that came
over me that such details would be more intolerable than those heads
drying on the stakes under Mr. Kurtz’s windows. A er all, that was only a
savage sight, while I seemed at one bound to have been transported into
some lightless region of subtle horrors, where pure, uncomplicated savagery
was a positive relief, being something that had a right to exist—obviously—
in the sunshine. e 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 de nition I was to
hear? ere had been enemies, criminals, workers—and these were rebels.
ose 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. ere 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. e 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. e bushes did not rustle.
‘Suddenly round the corner of the house a group of men appeared, as
though they had come up from the ground. ey waded waist-deep in the
grass, in a compact body, bearing an improvised stretcher in their midst.
Instantly, in the emptiness of the landscape, a cry arose whose shrillness
pierced the still air like a sharp arrow ying straight to the very heart of the
land; and, as if by enchantment, streams of human beings—of naked
human beings—with spears in their hands, with bows, with shields, with
wild glances and savage movements, were poured into the clearing by the
dark-faced and pensive forest. e bushes shook, the grass swayed for a
time, and then everything stood still in attentive immobility.
‘Now, if he does not say the right thing to them we are all done for,’ said
the Russian at my elbow. e knot of men with the stretcher had stopped,
too, halfway to the steamer, as if petri ed. I saw the man on the stretcher
sit up, lank and with an upli ed arm, above the shoulders of the bearers.
‘Let us hope that the man who can talk so well of love in general will nd
some particular reason to spare us this time,’ I said. I resented bitterly the
absurd danger of our situation, as if to be at the mercy of that atrocious
phantom had been a dishonouring necessity. I could not hear a sound, but
through my glasses I saw the thin arm extended commandingly, the lower
jaw moving, the eyes of that apparition shining darkly far in its bony head
that nodded with grotesque jerks. Kurtz—Kurtz—that means short in
German—don’t it? Well, the name was as true as everything else in his life
— and death. He looked at least seven feet long. His covering had fallen
o , and his body emerged from it pitiful and appalling as from a winding-
sheet. I could see the cage of his ribs all astir, the bones of his arm waving.
It was as though an animated 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. e 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 ri e, and a light revolver-carbine— the thunderbolts of that
pitiful Jupiter. e manager bent over him murmuring as he walked beside
his head. ey 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 re
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. is shadow looked
satiated and calm, as though for the moment it had had its ll 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. ese special
recommendations were turning up again. e volume of tone he emitted
without e ort, almost without the trouble of moving his lips, amazed me. A
voice! a voice! It was grave, profound, vibrating, while the man did not
seem capable of a whisper. However, he had enough strength in him—
factitious no doubt—to very nearly make an end of us, as you shall hear
directly.
‘ e manager appeared silently in the doorway; I stepped out at once and
he drew the curtain a er me. e Russian, eyed curiously by the pilgrims,
was staring at the shore. I followed the direction of his glance.
‘Dark human shapes could be made out in the distance, itting
indistinctly against the gloomy border of the forest, and near the river two
bronze gures, leaning on tall spears, stood in the sunlight under fantastic
head-dresses of spotted skins, warlike and still in statuesque repose. And
from right to le along the lighted shore moved a wild and gorgeous
apparition of a woman.
‘She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths,
treading the earth proudly, with a slight jingle and ash of barbarous
ornaments. She carried her head high; her hair was done in the shape of a
helmet; she had brass leggings to the knee, brass wire gauntlets to the
elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable necklaces of glass
beads on her neck; bizarre things, charms, gi s of witch-men, that hung
about her, glittered and trembled at every step. She must have had the
value of several elephant tusks upon her. She was savage and superb, wild-
eyed and magni cent; there was something ominous and stately in her
deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the
whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the
fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her, pensive, as though it had
been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul.
‘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 erce 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. ere was a low
jingle, a glint of yellow metal, a sway of fringed draperies, and she stopped
as if her heart had failed her. e young fellow by my side growled. e
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 and threw them up rigid above her head, as though
in an uncontrollable desire to touch the sky, and at the same time the swi
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 le . Once only her eyes gleamed back at us in the dusk of
the thickets before she disappeared.
‘If she had o ered 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—it’s too much for me. Ah, well, it’s all over now.’
‘At this moment I heard Kurtz’s deep voice behind the curtain: ‘Save me!—
save the ivory, you mean. Don’t tell me. Save ME! Why, I’ve had to save
you. You are interrupting my plans now. Sick! Sick! Not so sick as you
would like to believe. Never mind. I’ll carry my ideas out yet—I will return.
I’ll show you what can be done. You with your little peddling notions—you
are interfering with me. I will return. I….’
‘ e manager came out. He did me the honour to take me under the arm
and lead me aside. ‘He is very low, very low,’ he said. He considered it
necessary to sigh, but neglected to be consistently sorrowful. ‘We have done
all we could for him—haven’t we? But there is no disguising the fact, Mr.
Kurtz has done more harm than good to the Company. He did not see the
time was not ripe for vigorous action. Cautiously, cautiously—that’s my
principle. We must be cautious yet. e district is closed to us for a time.
Deplorable! Upon the whole, the trade will su er. I don’t deny there is a
remarkable quantity of ivory—mostly fossil. We must save it, at all events—
but look how precarious the position is—and why? Because the method is
unsound.’ ‘Do you,’ said I, looking at the shore, ‘call it ‘unsound method?‘
‘Without doubt,’ he exclaimed hotly. ‘Don’t you?’ … ‘No method at all,’ I
murmured a er a while. ‘Exactly,’ he exulted. ‘I anticipated this. Shows a
complete want of judgment. It is my duty to point it out in the proper
quarter.’ ‘Oh,’ said I, ‘that fellow—what’s his name?—the brickmaker, will
make a readable report for you.’ He appeared confounded for a moment. It
seemed to me I had never breathed an atmosphere so vile, and I turned
mentally to Kurtz for relief—positively for relief. ‘Nevertheless I think Mr.
Kurtz is a 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…. e Russian tapped me on the shoulder. I heard him mumbling
and stammering something about ‘brother seaman—couldn’t conceal—
knowledge of matters that would a ect 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. ‘ e manager thinks you ought to be
hanged.’ He showed a concern at this intelligence which amused me at rst.
‘I had better get out of the way quietly,’ he said earnestly. ‘I can do no more
for Kurtz now, and they would soon nd some excuse. What’s to stop
them? ere’s a military post three hundred miles from here.’ ‘Well, upon
my word,’ said I, ‘perhaps you had better go if you have any friends
amongst the savages near by.’ ‘Plenty,’ he said. ‘ ey are simple people—and
I want nothing, you know.’ He stood biting his lip, then: ‘I don’t want any
harm to happen to these whites here, but of course I was thinking of Mr.
Kurtz’s reputation—but you are a brother seaman and—’ ‘All right,’ said I,
a er a time. ‘Mr. Kurtz’s reputation is safe with me.’ I did not know how
truly I spoke.
‘He informed me, lowering his voice, that it was Kurtz who had ordered
the attack to be made on the steamer. ‘He hated sometimes the idea of
being taken away—and then again…. But I don’t understand these matters.
I am a simple man. He thought it would scare you away—that you would
give it up, thinking him dead. I could not stop him. Oh, I had an awful
time of it this last month.’ ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘He is all right now.’ ‘Ye-e-es,’ he
muttered, not very convinced apparently. ‘ anks,’ said I; ‘I shall keep my
eyes open.’ ‘But quiet-eh?’ he urged anxiously. ‘It would be awful for his
reputation if anybody here—’ I promised a complete discretion with great
gravity. ‘I have a canoe and three black fellows waiting not very far. I am
o . Could you give me a few Martini-Henry cartridges?’ I could, and did,
with proper secrecy. He helped himself, with a wink at me, to a handful of
my tobacco. ‘Between sailors—you know—good English tobacco.’ At the
door of the pilot-house he turned round—‘I say, haven’t you a pair of shoes
you could spare?’ He raised one leg. ‘Look.’ e soles were tied with
knotted strings sandalwise under his bare feet. I rooted out an old pair, at
which he looked with admiration before tucking it under his le arm. One
of his pockets (bright red) was bulging with cartridges, from the other (dark
blue) peeped ‘Towson’s Inquiry,’ etc., etc. He seemed to think himself
excellently well 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 a er 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
re burned, illuminating tfully 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. e
monotonous beating of a big drum lled the air with mu ed shocks and a
lingering vibration. A steady droning sound of many men chanting each to
himself some weird incantation came out from the black, at wall of the
woods as the humming of bees comes out of a hive, and had a strange
narcotic e ect upon my half-awake senses. I believe I dozed o 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 e ect of audible
and soothing silence. I glanced casually into the little cabin. A light was
burning within, but Mr. Kurtz was not there.
‘I think I would have raised an outcry if I had believed my eyes. But I
didn’t believe them at rst—the thing seemed so impossible. e fact is I
was completely unnerved by a sheer blank fright, pure abstract terror,
unconnected with any distinct shape of physical danger. What made this
emotion so overpowering was— how shall I de ne it?—the moral shock I
received, as if something altogether monstrous, intolerable to thought and
odious to the soul, had been thrust upon me unexpectedly. is lasted of
course the merest fraction of a second, and then the usual sense of
commonplace, deadly danger, the possibility of a sudden onslaught and
massacre, or something of the kind, which I saw impending, was positively
welcome and composing. It paci ed me, in fact, so much that I did not
raise an alarm.
‘ ere was an agent buttoned up inside an ulster and sleeping on a chair
on deck within three feet of me. e yells had not awakened him; he
snored very slightly; I le him to his slumbers and leaped ashore. I did not
betray Mr. Kurtz—it was ordered I should never betray him— it was
written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice. I was anxious to
deal with this shadow by myself alone—and to this day I don’t know why I
was so jealous of sharing with any one the peculiar blackness of that
experience.
‘As soon as I got on the bank I saw a trail—a broad trail through the grass.
I remember the exultation with which I said to myself, ‘He can’t walk—he is
crawling on all-fours—I’ve got him.’ e grass was wet with dew. I strode
rapidly with clenched sts. I fancy I had some vague notion of falling upon
him and giving him a drubbing. I don’t know. I had some imbecile
thoughts. e knitting old woman with the cat obtruded herself upon my
memory as a most improper person to be sitting at the other end of such an
a air. 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. e 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 le 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 res loomed between the trees,
and the murmur of many voices issued from the forest. I had cut him o
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? ough 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 re. A black gure 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, some witch-man, no doubt: it
looked endlike enough. ‘Do you know what you are doing?’ I whispered.
‘Perfectly,’ he answered, raising his voice for that single word: it sounded to
me far o and yet loud, like a hail through a speaking-trumpet. ‘If he
makes a row we are lost,’ I thought to myself. is clearly was not a case for
sticu s, even apart from the very natural aversion I had to beat that
Shadow—this wandering and tormented thing. ‘You will be lost,’ I said
—’utterly lost.’ One gets sometimes such a ash of inspiration, you know. I
did say the right thing, though indeed he could not have been more
irretrievably lost than he was at this very moment, when the foundations of
our intimacy were being laid—to endure— to endure—even to the end—
even beyond.
‘I had immense plans,’ he muttered irresolutely. ‘Yes,’ said I; ‘but if you try
to shout I’ll smash your head with—’ ere was not a stick or a stone near.
‘I will throttle you for good,’ I corrected myself. ‘I was on the threshold of
great things,’ he pleaded, in a voice of longing, with a wistfulness of tone
that made my blood run cold. ‘And now for this stupid scoundrel—’ ‘Your
success in Europe is assured in any case,’ I a rmed steadily. I did not want
to have the throttling of him, you understand—and indeed it would have
been very little use for any practical purpose. I tried to break the spell—the
heavy, mute spell of the wilderness— that seemed to draw him to its pitiless
breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of
grati ed and monstrous passions. is alone, I was convinced, had driven
him out to the edge of the forest, to the bush, towards the gleam of res,
the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations; this alone had
beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations.
And, don’t you see, the terror of the position was not in being 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. ere 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
oated in the air. I’ve been telling you what we said— repeating the phrases
we pronounced—but what’s the good? ey were common everyday words
—the familiar, vague sounds exchanged on every waking day of life. But
what of that? ey had behind them, to my mind, the terri c
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 nal 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 him, his bony
arm clasped round my neck—and he was not much heavier than a child.
‘When next day we le at noon, the crowd, of whose presence behind the
curtain of trees I had been acutely conscious all the time, owed out of the
woods again, lled the clearing, covered the slope with a mass of naked,
breathing, quivering, bronze bodies. I steamed up a bit, then swung down
stream, and two thousand eyes followed the evolutions of the splashing,
thumping, erce river-demon beating the water with its terrible tail and
breathing black smoke into the air. In front of the rst rank, along the river,
three men, plastered with bright red earth from head to foot, strutted to
and fro restlessly. When we came abreast again, they faced the river,
stamped their feet, nodded their horned heads, swayed their scarlet bodies;
they shook towards the erce river-demon a bunch of black feathers, a
mangy skin with a pendent tail—something that looked a dried gourd; they
shouted periodically together strings of amazing words that resembled no
sounds of human language; and the deep murmurs of the crowd,
interrupted suddenly, were like the responses of some satanic litany.
‘We had carried Kurtz into the pilot-house: there was more air there.
Lying on the couch, he stared through the open shutter. ere was an eddy
in the mass of human bodies, and the woman with helmeted head and
tawny cheeks rushed out to the very brink of the stream. She put out her
hands, shouted something, and all that wild mob took up the shout in a
roaring chorus of articulated, rapid, breathless utterance.
‘Do you understand this?’ I asked.
‘He kept on looking out past me with ery, longing eyes, with a mingled
expression of wistfulness and hate. He made no answer, but I saw a smile, a
smile of inde nable meaning, appear on his colourless lips that a moment
a er 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 ri es 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 a er time. ey broke and ran,
they leaped, they crouched, they swerved, they dodged the ying terror of
the sound. e three red chaps had fallen at, face down on the shore, as
though they had been shot dead. Only the barbarous and superb woman
did not so much as inch, and stretched tragically her bare arms a er 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.
‘ e brown current ran swi ly 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 swi ly, too, ebbing, ebbing out of his heart into the
sea of inexorable time. e manager was very placid, he had no vital
anxieties now, he took us both in with a comprehensive and satis ed
glance: the ‘a air’ had come o as well as could be wished. I saw the time
approaching when I would be le alone of the party of ‘unsound method.’
e 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 nightmares forced upon me in the tenebrous land invaded by
these mean and greedy phantoms.
‘Kurtz discoursed. A voice! a voice! It rang deep to the very last. It
survived his strength to hide in the magni cent folds of eloquence the
barren darkness of his heart. Oh, he struggled! he struggled! e wastes of
his weary brain were haunted by shadowy images now—images of wealth
and fame revolving obsequiously round his unextinguishable gi of noble
and lo y expression. My Intended, my station, my career, my ideas— these
were the subjects for the occasional utterances of elevated sentiments. e
shade of the original Kurtz frequented the bedside of the hollow sham,
whose fate it was to be buried presently in the mould of primeval earth. But
both the diabolic love and the unearthly hate of the mysteries it had
penetrated fought for the possession of that soul satiated with primitive
emotions, avid of lying fame, of sham distinction, of all the appearances of
success and power.
‘Sometimes he was contemptibly childish. He desired to have kings meet
him at railway-stations on his return from some ghastly Nowhere, where he
intended to accomplish great things. ‘You show them you have in you
something that is really pro table, and then there will be no limits to the
recognition of your ability,’ he would say. ‘Of course you must take care of
the motives— right motives—always.’ e long reaches that were like one
and the same reach, monotonous bends that were exactly alike, slipped past
the steamer with their multitude of secular trees looking patiently a er this
grimy fragment of another world, the forerunner of change, of conquest, of
trade, of massacres, of blessings. I looked ahead—piloting. ‘Close the
shutter,’ said Kurtz suddenly one day; ‘I can’t bear to look at this.’ I did so.
ere 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. is delay was the rst thing that shook Kurtz’s
con dence. 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. ‘ is
noxious fool’ (meaning the manager) ‘is capable of prying into my boxes
when I am not looking.’ In the a ernoon 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. ere 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, lings,
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.’ e light
was within a foot of his eyes. I forced myself to murmur, ‘Oh, nonsense!’
and stood over him as if trans xed.
‘Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have
never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn’t touched. I was
fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face
the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror—of an
intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of
desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of
complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision
—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:
‘ e horror! e horror!’
‘I blew the candle out and le the cabin. e pilgrims were dining in the
mess-room, and I took my place opposite the manager, who li ed his eyes
to give me a questioning glance, which I successfully ignored. He leaned
back, serene, with that peculiar smile of his sealing the unexpressed depths
of his meanness. A continuous shower of small ies streamed upon the
lamp, upon the cloth, upon our hands and faces. Suddenly the manager’s
boy put his insolent black head in the doorway, and said in a tone of
scathing contempt:
‘Mistah Kurtz—he dead.’
 ‘All the pilgrims rushed out to see. I remained, and went on with my
dinner. I believe I was considered brutally callous. However, I did not eat
much. ere was a lamp in there—light, don’t you know—and outside it
was so beastly, beastly dark. I went no more near the remarkable man who
had pronounced a judgment upon the adventures of his soul on this earth.
e voice was gone. What else had been there? But I am of course aware
that next day the pilgrims buried something in a muddy hole.
‘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. e 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. is is the reason why I a rm 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
ame 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. ‘ e horror!’ He was a remarkable man.
A er 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 lled with physical pain, and a careless contempt for
the evanescence of all things—even of this pain itself. No! It is his extremity
that I seem to have lived through. True, he had made that last stride, he
had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my
hesitating foot. And perhaps in this is the whole di erence; perhaps all the
wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that
inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the
invisible. Perhaps! I like to think my summing-up would not have been a
word of careless contempt. Better his cry—much better. It was an
a rmation, a moral victory paid for by innumerable defeats, by abominable
terrors, by abominable satisfactions. But it was a victory! at is why I have
remained loyal to Kurtz to the last, and even beyond, when a long time
a er I heard once more, not his own voice, but the echo of his magni cent
eloquence thrown to me from a soul as translucently pure as a cli of
crystal.
‘No, they did not bury me, though there is a period of time which I
remember mistily, with a shuddering wonder, like a passage through some
inconceivable world that had no hope in it and no desire. I found myself
back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through
the streets to lch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous
cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insigni cant and
silly dreams. ey trespassed upon my thoughts. ey were intruders
whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretence, because I felt so
sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. eir bearing, which
was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their
business in the assurance of perfect safety, was o ensive to me like the
outrageous auntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to
comprehend. I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some
di culty in restraining myself from 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 a airs 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 o cial manner and wearing gold-
rimmed spectacles, called on me one day and made inquiries, at rst
circuitous, a erwards 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 o ered him the report on the ‘Suppression of Savage Customs,’
with the postscriptum torn o . He took it up eagerly, but ended by sni ng
at it with an air of contempt. ‘ is is not what we had a right to expect,’ he
remarked. ‘Expect nothing else,’ I said. ‘ ere are only private letters.’ He
withdrew upon some threat of legal proceedings, and I saw him no more;
but another fellow, calling himself Kurtz’s cousin, appeared two days later,
and was anxious to hear all the details about his dear relative’s last
moments. Incidentally he gave me to understand that Kurtz had been
essentially a great musician. ‘ ere was the making of an immense success,’
said the man, who was an organist, I believe, with lank grey hair owing
over a greasy coat-collar. I had no reason to doubt his statement; and to
this day I am unable to say what was Kurtz’s profession, whether he ever
had any—which was the greatest of his talents. I had taken him for a
painter who wrote for the papers, or else for a journalist who could paint—
but even the cousin (who took snu during the interview) could not tell
me what he had been—exactly. He was a universal genius—on that point I
agreed with the old chap, who thereupon blew his nose noisily into a large
cotton handkerchief and withdrew in senile agitation, bearing o some
family letters and memoranda without importance. Ultimately a journalist
anxious to know something of the fate of his ‘dear colleague’ turned up.
is visitor informed me Kurtz’s proper sphere ought to have been politics
‘on the popular side.’ He had furry straight eyebrows, bristly hair cropped
short, an eyeglass on a broad ribbon, and, becoming expansive, confessed
his opinion that Kurtz really couldn’t write a bit—’but heavens! how that
man could talk. He electri ed large meetings. He had faith—don’t you see?
—he had the faith. He could get himself to believe anything—anything. He
would have been a splendid leader of an extreme party.’ ‘What party?’ I
asked. ‘Any party,’ answered the other. ‘He was an—an—extremist.’ Did I
not think so? I assented. Did I know, he asked, with a sudden ash of
curiosity, ‘what it was that had induced him to go out there?’ ‘Yes,’ said I,
and forthwith handed him the famous Report for publication, if he thought
t. He glanced through it hurriedly, mumbling all the time, judged ‘it
would do,’ and took himself o with this plunder.
‘ us I was le 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. ere 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 ful lment 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 swi and nal 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 lived as much as he had ever lived—
a shadow insatiable of splendid appearances, of frightful realities; a shadow
darker than the shadow of the night, and draped nobly in the folds of a
gorgeous eloquence. e vision seemed to enter the house with me—the
stretcher, the phantom-bearers, the wild crowd of obedient worshippers,
the gloom of the forests, the glitter of the reach between the murky bends,
the beat of the drum, regular and mu ed like the beating of a heart—the
heart of a conquering darkness. It was a moment of triumph for the
wilderness, an invading and vengeful rush which, it seemed to me, I would
have to keep back alone for the salvation of another soul. And the memory
of what I had heard him say afar there, with the horned shapes stirring at
my back, in the glow of res, within the patient woods, those broken
phrases came back to me, were heard again in their ominous and terrifying
simplicity. I remembered his abject pleading, his abject threats, the colossal
scale of his vile desires, the meanness, the torment, the tempestuous
anguish of his soul. And later on I seemed to see his collected languid
manner, when he said one day, ‘ is lot of ivory now is really mine. e
Company did not pay for it. I collected it myself at a very great personal
risk. I am afraid they will try to claim it as theirs though. H’m. It is a
di cult case. What do you think I ought to do—resist? Eh? I want no more
than justice.’ … He wanted no more than justice—no more than justice. I
rang the bell before a mahogany door on the rst oor, and while I waited
he seemed to stare at me out of the glassy panel— stare with that wide and
immense stare embracing, condemning, loathing all the universe. I seemed
to hear the whispered cry, ‘ e horror! e horror!’
‘ e dusk was falling. I had to wait in a lo y drawing-room with three
long windows from oor to ceiling that were like three luminous and
bedraped columns. e bent gilt legs and backs of the furniture shone in
indistinct curves. e tall marble replace had a cold and monumental
whiteness. A grand piano stood massively in a corner; with dark gleams on
the at surfaces like a sombre and polished sarcophagus. A high door
opened—closed. I rose.
‘She came forward, all in black, with a pale head, oating 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 delity, for belief,
for su ering. e room seemed to have grown darker, as if all the sad light
of the cloudy evening had taken refuge on her forehead. is fair hair, this
pale visage, this pure brow, seemed surrounded by an ashy halo from
which the dark eyes looked out at me. eir glance was guileless, profound,
con dent, 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 my strained ears seemed to hear
distinctly, mingled with her tone of despairing regret, the summing up
whisper of his eternal condemnation. I asked myself what I was doing
there, with a sensation of panic in my heart as though I had blundered into
a place of cruel and absurd mysteries not t for a human being to behold.
She motioned me to a chair. We sat down. I laid the packet gently on the
little table, and she put her hand over it. … ‘You knew him well,’ she
murmured, a er a moment of mourning silence.
‘Intimacy grows quickly out there,’ I said. ‘I knew him as well as it is
possible for one man to know another.’
‘And you admired him,’ she said. ‘It was impossible to know him and not
to admire him. Was it?’
‘He was a remarkable man,’ I said, unsteadily. en before the appealing
xity of her gaze, that seemed to watch for more words on my lips, I went
on, ‘It was impossible not to—’
‘Love him,’ she nished eagerly, silencing me into an appalled dumbness.
‘How true! how true! But when you think that no one knew him so well as
I! I had all his noble con dence. I knew him best.’
‘You knew him best,’ I repeated. And perhaps she did. But with every
word spoken the room was growing darker, and only her forehead, smooth
and white, remained illumined by the inextinguishable light of belief and
love.
‘You were his friend,’ she went on. ‘His friend,’ she repeated, a little
louder. ‘You must have been, if he had given you this, and sent you to me.
I feel I can speak to you—and oh! I must speak. I want you—you who 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. e 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, a er 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 gi 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
triumphant darkness from which I could not have defended her— from
which I could not even defend myself.
‘What a loss to me—to us!’—she corrected herself with beautiful
generosity; then added in a murmur, ‘To the world.’ By the last gleams of
twilight I could see the glitter of her eyes, full of tears—of tears that would
not fall.
‘I have been very happy—very fortunate—very proud,’ she went on. ‘Too
fortunate. Too happy for a little while. And now I am unhappy for—for life.’
‘She stood up; her fair hair seemed to catch all the remaining light in a
glimmer of gold. I rose, too.
‘And of all this,’ she went on mournfully, ‘of all his promise, and of all his
greatness, of his generous mind, of his noble heart, nothing remains—
nothing but a memory. You and I—’
‘We shall always remember him,’ I said hastily.
‘No!’ she cried. ‘It is impossible that all this should be lost— that such a
life should be sacri ced to leave nothing—but sorrow. You know what vast
plans he had. I knew of them, too—I could not perhaps understand—but
others knew of them. Something must remain. His words, at least, have not
died.’
‘His words will remain,’ I said.
‘And his example,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Men looked up to him— his
goodness shone in every act. His example—’
‘True,’ I said; ‘his example, too. Yes, his example. I forgot that.’
‘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 a er a retreating gure, 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 in nite 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 mu ed 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.
 ‘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?’ e dusk was
repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that
seemed to swell menacingly like the rst whisper of a rising wind. ‘ e
horror! e 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.
‘ e 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. e heavens do not fall
for such a tri e. 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 rst of the
ebb,’ said the Director suddenly. I raised my head. e o ng was barred by
a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost
ends of the earth owed sombre under an overcast sky— seemed to lead
into the heart of an immense darkness.