Heart
of Darkness
by
Joseph Conrad
First
published in 1901.
56 (27)
(38)
II
"One
evening as I was lying flat on the deck of my steamboat, I heard voices
approaching -and there were the nephew and the uncle strolling along
the bank. I laid my head on my arm again, and had nearly lost
myself in a doze, when somebody said in my ear, as it were: 'I am as
harmless as a little child, but I don't like to be dictated to. Am I
the manager -or am I not? I was ordered to send him there. It's
incredible.'. . . I became aware that the two were standing on the
shore alongside the forepart of the steamboat, just below my head. I
did not move; it did (28)
not
occur to me to move: I was sleepy.
'It is unpleasant,' grunted the uncle. 'He has asked the Administration
to be sent there,' said the other, 'with the idea of showing what he
could do; and I was instructed accordingly. Look at the influence that
man must have. Is it not frightful?' They
both agreed it was frightful, then made several bizarre remarks: 'Make
rain and fine weather -one man -the Council -by the nose' -bits of
absurd sentences that got the better of my drowsiness, so that I had
pretty near the whole of my wits about me when the uncle said,
'The climate may do away with this difficulty for you. Is he
alone there?' 'Yes,' answered the manager; 'he sent his assistant down
the river with a note to me in these terms: "Clear this poor devil out
of the country, and don't bother sending more of that sort. I had
rather be alone than have the kind of men you can dispose of with me."
It was more than a year ago. Can you imagine such impudence!' 'Anything since
then?' asked the other hoarsely. 'Ivory,'
jerked the nephew; 'lots of it -prime sort -lots -most annoying, from
him.'
'And
with that?' questioned the heavy rumble. 'Invoice,' was the reply fired
out, (39)
so to speak. Then silence. They had been
talking about Kurtz.
"I
was broad awake by this time, but, lying perfectly at ease, remained
still, having no inducement to change my position.
'How did that ivory come all this way?' growled the elder
man, who seemed very vexed. The other explained that it had come with a
fleet of canoes in charge of an English half-caste clerk Kurtz had with
him; that Kurtz had apparently intended
57
to return himself, the station
being by that time bare of goods and stores, but after
coming three hundred miles, had suddenly decided to go back, which he
started to do alone in a small dugout with four paddlers, leaving the
half-caste to continue down the river with the ivory. The
two fellows there seemed astounded at anybody attempting such a thing.
They were at a loss for an adequate motive. As to me, I
seemed to see Kurtz for the first time. It
was a distinct glimpse: the dugout, four paddling savages,
and the lone white man turning his back suddenly on the headquarters,
on relief, on thoughts of home -perhaps; setting his face towards the
depths of the wilderness, towards his empty and desolate station.
I did not know the motive. Perhaps he was just simply a
fine fellow who stuck to his work for its own sake. His name, you
understand, had not been pronounced once. He was 'that man.' The half
caste, who, as far as I could see, had conducted a difficult trip with
great prudence and pluck, was invariably alluded to as 'that
scoundrel.' The 'scoundrel' had reported that the 'man' had been very
ill -had recovered imperfectly.... The two below me moved away then a
few paces, and strolled back and forth at some little distance. I
heard: 'Military post -doctor -two hundred miles -quite alone now
-unavoidable delays -nine months -no news -strange rumors.' They
approached again, just as the manager was saying, (29)
'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? (40) Anything
-anything can be done in this country. That's what I say; nobody here,
you understand, here, can endanger your position.
58
And why? You
stand the climate -you outlast them all. The danger is in Europe; but
there before I left I took care to --' They moved off and whispered, then their voices rose again.
'The extraordinary series of delays is not my fault. I did my best.'
The fat man sighed. 'Very sad.' 'And the
pestiferous absurdity of his talk,'
continued the other; 'he
bothered me enough when he was here. "Each station should be
like a beacon on the road towards better things, a center for trade of
course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing."
Conceive you -that ass! And he wants to be manager! No, it's --' Here
he got choked by excessive indignation, and I lifted my
head the least bit. I was surprised to see how near they were -right
under me. I could have spat upon their hats. They were looking on the
ground, absorbed in thought. The manager was switching his leg with a
slender twig: his sagacious relative lifted his head. 'You have been
well since you came out this time?' he asked. The other gave a start.
'Who? I? Oh! Like a charm -like a charm. But the rest -oh, my goodness!
All sick. They die so quick, too, that I haven't the time to send them
out of the country -it's incredible!' 'H'm.
Just so,' grunted the uncle.
'Ah! my boy, trust to
this -I say, trust to this.' I saw him extend his short flipper of an
arm for a gesture that took in the forest, the creek, the mud, the
river -seemed to beckon with a dishonoring flourish before the sunlit
face of the land a treacherous appeal to the lurking death, to the
hidden evil, to the profound darkness of its heart. It was so startling
that I leaped to my feet and looked back at the edge of the forest, as
though I had expected an answer of some sort to that black display of
confidence. You know the foolish notions that come to one
sometimes. The high stillness confronted these two figures with its
ominous patience, waiting for the passing away of a fantastic invasion.
59
"They swore aloud together -out of sheer fright, I
believe -then pretending not to know anything of my existence, turned
back to the station. The sun was low; and leaning forward side by side,
they seemed to be tugging painfully uphill their two (41) ridiculous
shadows of unequal length, that trailed behind them slowly over the
tall grass without bending a single blade.
READING
ASSIGNMENT FOUR:
"In
a few days the Eldorado Expedition went into the patient wilderness (30) ,
that closed upon it as the sea closes over a diver. Long afterwards the
news came that all the donkeys were dead. I know nothing as to the fate
of the less valuable animals. They, no doubt, like the rest of us,
found what they deserved. I did not inquire. I was then rather excited
at the prospect of meeting Kurtz very soon. When I say very soon I mean
it comparatively. It was just two months from the day we left the creek
when we came to the bank below Kurtz's station.
The
Voyage Up River
"Going
up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the
world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings.
An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was
warm, thick, heavy, sluggish.
There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of
the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of over-shadowed
distances. On silvery sandbanks hippos and alligators sunned themselves
side by side. The broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded
islands; you lost your way on that river as you would in a desert, and
butted all day long against shoals, trying to find the channel, till
you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you
had known once -somewhere -far away -in another existence perhaps.
There were moments when one's past came back to one, as it will
sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came
in the shape of an unrestful
and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming
realities of this strange
60
world
of plants, and water, and silence. And this stillness of life did not
in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an
implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It
looked at you with a vengeful aspect. I got used to it afterwards; I
did not see it any more;
I had no time. I had to keep guessing at the channel; I
had to discern, mostly by inspiration, the signs of hidden banks; I
watched for sunken stones; I was learning to clap my teeth smartly
before my heart flew out, when I shaved by a fluke some infernal sly
old snag that would have ripped the life out (42) of
the tin-pot steamboat and drowned all the pilgrims; I had to keep a
lookout for the signs of dead wood we could cut up in the night for
next day's steaming. When you have to attend to things of that sort, to
the mere incidents of the surface, the reality -the reality, I tell you
-fades. The inner truth is hidden -luckily, luckily. But I felt it all
the same; I felt often its mysterious stillness watching me at my
monkey tricks, just as it watches you fellows performing on your
respective tight-ropes for -what is it? half-a-crown a tumble --"
"Try to be civil, Marlow," growled a voice, and I knew
there was at least one listener awake besides myself.
"I beg your pardon. I forgot the heartache which makes
up the rest of the price. And indeed what does the price matter, if the
trick be well done? (31) You
do your tricks very well. And I didn't do badly either, since I managed
not to sink that steamboat on my first trip. It's a wonder to me yet.
Imagine a blindfolded man set to drive a van over a bad road. I sweated
and shivered over that business considerably, I can tell you. After
all, for a seaman, to scrape the bottom of the thing that's supposed to
float all the time under his care is the unpardonable sin. No one may
know of it, but you never forget the thump -eh? A blow on the very
heart. You remember it, you dream of it, you wake up at night and think
of it -
61
years
after -and go hot and cold all over. I don't pretend to say that
steamboat floated all the time. More
than once she had to wade for a bit, with twenty cannibals
splashing around and pushing. We had enlisted some of these chaps on
the way for a crew. Fine fellows -cannibals -in their place. They were
men one could work with, and I am grateful to them. And, after all,
they did not eat each other before my face: they had brought
along a provision of hippo-meat which went rotten, and made
the mystery of the wilderness stink in my nostrils. Phoo! I can sniff it now.
I
had the manager on board and three or four pilgrims with their staves
-all complete. Sometimes we came upon a station close by the bank,
clinging to the skirts of the unknown, and the white men rushing out of
a tumbledown hovel, with great gestures of joy and surprise and
welcome, seemed very strange -had the appearance of being held there
captive by a (43) spell.
The word ivory would ring in the air for a while -and on we went again
into the silence, along empty reaches, round the still bends, between
the high walls of our winding way, reverberating in hollow claps the
ponderous beat of the stern-wheel. Trees,
trees, millions of trees, massive, immense, running up high; and at
their foot, hugging the bank against the stream, crept the little
begrimed steamboat, like a sluggish beetle crawling on the floor of a
lofty portico.
It made you feel very small, very lost, and yet it was not altogether
depressing, that feeling. After all, if you were small, the grimy
beetle crawled on -which was just what you wanted it to do. Where the
pilgrims imagined it crawled to I don't know. To some place where they
expected to get something. I bet! For me it crawled towards
Kurtz -exclusively; but when the steam-pipes started leaking
we crawled very slow.
The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had
stepped leisurely
62
across the water to bar the way
for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the
heart of darkness. It was very quiet there. At night sometimes the roll
of drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain
sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air high over our heads, till
the first break of day. Whether it meant war, peace, or
prayer we could not tell. The dawns were heralded by the descent of a
chill stillness; the wood-cutters slept, their fires burned low; the
snapping of a twig would make you start. We were wanderers on
a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown
planet. (32)
We
could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an
accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and
of excessive toil.
But
suddenly, as we struggled round a bend, there would be a
glimpse of rush walls, of peaked grass-roofs,
a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of
feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling, under the droop of
heavy and motionless foliage. The steamer toiled
along slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy. The
prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us -who could
tell? We were cut off from the comprehension of our
surroundings; we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly
appalled, as sane men (44) would
be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. We could not
understand because we were too far and could not remember because we
were traveling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone,
leaving hardly a sign -and no memories.
"The
earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled
form of a conquered monster, but there -there you could look at a thing
monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were -No, they were
not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it -this suspicion
of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one.
63
They
howled and leaped,
and spun, and made horrid faces; but what
thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity -like yours -the
thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly.
Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to
yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to
the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a
meaning in it which you -you so remote from the night of first ages
-could comprehend. And why not? The mind of man is capable of
anything -because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the
future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage -who can tell? -but truth -truth stripped of its
cloak of time. Let
the fool gape and shudder -the man knows, and can look on without a
wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore.
He must meet that truth with his own true stuff -with his own inborn
strength. Principles won't do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags -rags
that would fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate
belief. An appeal to me in this fiendish row -is there? Very well; I
hear; I admit, but I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is
the speech that cannot be silenced. Of course, a fool, what with sheer
fright and fine sentiments, is always safe. Who's that grunting? You
wonder I didn't go ashore for a howl and a dance? Well, no -I didn't.
Fine sentiments, you say? Fine sentiments, be hanged! I had no time. I
had to mess about with white-lead and strips of woolen blanket helping
to put bandages (33) on
those leaky steampipes (45)
-I tell you. I had to watch the steering,
and circumvent those snags, and get the tin-pot along by hook or by
crook. There was surface truth enough in these things to save a wiser
man. And
between whiles I had to look after
the savage who was fireman.
64
He
was an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical boiler. He was
there below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as
seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat,
walking on his hindlegs.
A few months of training had done for that really fine chap. He
squinted at the steam-gauge and at the water-guage
with an evident effort of intrepidity -and he had filed teeth, too, the
poor devil, and the wool of his pate shaved into queer patterns, and
three ornamental scars on each of his cheeks. He ought to
have been clapping his hands and stamping his feet on the bank, instead
of which he was hard at work, a thrall to strange witchcraft, full of
improving knowledge. He was useful because he had been instructed; and
what he knew was this -that should the water in that transparent thing
disappear, the evil spirit inside the boiler would get angry through
the greatness of his thirst, and take a terrible vengeance. So he
sweated and watched the glass fearfully (with an impromptu charm, made
of rags, tied to his arm, and a piece of polished bone, as big as a
watch, stuck flatways through his lower lip), while
the wooded banks slipped past us slowly, the short noise was left
behind, the interminable miles of silence -and we crept on, towards
Kurtz. But the snags were thick, the water was
treacherous and shallow, the boiler seemed indeed to have a sulky devil
in it, and thus neither that fireman nor I had any time to peer into
our creepy thoughts.
"Some fifty miles below the Inner Station we came upon a
hut of reeds, an inclined and melancholy pole,
with the unrecognizable tatters of what had been a flag of some sort
flying from it, and a neatly stacked woodpile. This was unexpected. We
came to the bank, and on
the stack of firewood found a flat piece of board with some faded
pencil-writing on it. When deciphered it said: 'Wood for you. Hurry up.
Approach cautiously.' There was a signature, but it was illegible -not
Kurtz -a much longer word. 'Hurry up.' Where? Up the river? (46) 'Approach
cautiously.'
65
We had not done so. But the warning could not have been
meant for the place where it could be only found after approach.
Something was wrong above. But what -and how much? That was the
question. We commented adversely upon the imbecility of that
telegraphic style. The bush around said nothing, and would not let us
look very far either. A torn curtain of red twill hung in the doorway
of the hut, and flapped sadly in our faces. The dwelling was
dismantled; but we could see a white man had lived there not very long
ago. There remained a rude table -a plank on two posts; a heap of
rubbish reposed in a dark corner, and by the door I picked up a book.
It had lost its covers, (34) and
the pages had been thumbed into a state of extremely dirty softness;
but the back had been lovingly stitched afresh with white cotton
thread, which looked clean yet. It was an extraordinary find. Its title
was, An
Inquiry into some Points of Seamanship,
by a man Towser, Towson
-some such name -Master in his Majesty's Navy. The matter looked dreary
reading enough, with illustrative diagrams and repulsive tables of
figures, and the copy was sixty years old. I handled this amazing
antiquity with the greatest possible tenderness, lest it should
dissolve in my hands. Within, Towson or Towser
was inquiring earnestly into the breaking strain of ships' chains and
tackle, and other such matters. Not a very enthralling book; but at the
first glance you could see there a singleness of intention, an honest
concern for the right way of going to work, which made these humble
pages, thought out so many years ago, luminous with another than a
professional light. The simple old sailor, with his talk of chains and
purchases, made me forget the jungle and the pilgrims in a delicious
sensation of having come upon something unmistakably real. Such a book
being there was wonderful enough but still more astounding were the
notes
66
penciled
in the margin, and plainly referring to the text. I couldn't believe my
eyes! They were in !
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, (47) and
when I lifted my eyes I saw the woodpile was gone, and the manager,
aided by all the pilgrims, was shouting at me from the riverside. I
slipped the book into my pocket. I assure you to leave off reading was like tearing myself away from
the shelter of an old and solid friendship.
"I started the lame engine ahead.
'It must be this miserable trader -this intruder,'
exclaimed the manager, looking back malevolently at the place we had
left. 'He must be English,' I said. 'It will not save him from getting
into trouble if he is not careful,' muttered the manager darkly. I
observed with assumed innocence that no man was safe from trouble in
this world.
"The current was more rapid now, the steamer seemed at
her last gasp, the stern-wheel flopped languidly, and I caught myself
listening on tiptoe for the next beat of the boat, for in sober truth I
expected the wretched thing to give up every moment. It was like
watching the last flickers of a life. But still we crawled. Sometimes I
would pick out a tree a little way ahead to measure our progress
towards Kurtz by, but I lost it invariably before we got abreast. To
keep the eyes so long on one thing was too much for human patience. The
manager displayed a beautiful resignation. I fretted and fumed and took
to arguing with myself whether or no
I would (35) 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
67
any
one knew or ignored? What did it matter who was manager?
One gets sometimes such a flash of insight. The essentials of this
affair lay deep under the surface, beyond my reach, and beyond my power
of meddling.
"Towards the evening of the second day we judged
ourselves about eight
miles from Kurtz's station.
I wanted to push on; but the manager looked grave, and told me the
navigation up there was so dangerous that it would be advisable, the
sun being very low already, to wait where we were till next morning.
Moreover, he pointed out that if the warning to approach cautiously
were to be followed, we must approach in daylight -not at dusk or in
the dark. This was sensible enough. Eight miles meant nearly three
hours' steaming for us, and I could (48) also
see suspicious ripples at the upper end of the reach. Nevertheless, I
was annoyed beyond expression at the delay, and most unreasonably, too,
since one night more could not matter much after so many months. As we
had plenty of wood, and caution was the word, I
brought up in the middle of the stream. The reach was narrow, straight,
with high sides like a railway cutting. The dusk came gliding into it
long before the sun had set. The current ran smooth and swift, but a
dumb immobility sat on the banks. The living trees, lashed together by
the creepers and every living bush of the undergrowth, might have been
changed into stone, even to the slenderest twig, to the lightest leaf.
It was not sleep -it seemed unnatural, like a state of trance. Not the
faintest sound of any kind could be heard. You looked on amazed, and
began to suspect yourself of being deaf-then the night came suddenly,
and struck you blind as well. About three in the morning some large
fish leaped, and the loud splash made me jump as though a gun had been
fired. When the sun rose there was a white fog, very warm and
clammy, and more blinding than the night. It did not shift or drive; it
was just there, standing all round you like something solid. At eight
or nine, perhaps, it
68
lifted
as a shutter lifts. We had a glimpse of the towering multitude of
trees, of the immense matted jungle, with the blazing little ball of
the sun hanging over it -all perfectly still -and then the white
shutter came down again, smoothly, as if sliding in greased grooves.
I ordered the chain, which we had begun to heave in, to
be paid out again. Before it stopped running with a muffled
rattle, a cry, a very loud cry, as of infinite desolation, soared
slowly in the opaque air. It ceased. A complaining clamor, modulated in
savage discords, filled our ears. The sheer unexpectedness of it made
my hair stir under my cap. I don't know how it struck the
others: to me it seemed as though the mist itself had screamed, so
suddenly, and apparently from all sides at once, did this tumultuous
and mournful uproar arise. (36)
It
culminated in a hurried outbreak of almost intolerably excessive
shrieking, which stopped short, leaving us stiffened in a variety of
silly attitudes, and obstinately listening to the nearly as appalling
and excessive silence. 'Good God! What is the meaning --' (49)
stammered at my elbow one of the pilgrims
-a little fat man, with sandy hair and red whiskers, who wore sidespring boots, and pink
pajamas tucked into his socks. Two others remained open-mouthed a whole
minute, then dashed into the little cabin, to rush out incontinently
and stand darting scared glances, with Winchesters at 'ready' in their
hands. What we could see was just the steamer we were on, her outlines
blurred as though she had been on the point of dissolving, and a misty
strip of water, perhaps two feet broad, around her -and that was all.
The rest of the world was nowhere, as far as our eyes and ears were
concerned. Just nowhere. Gone, disappeared; swept off without leaving a
whisper or a shadow behind.
"I went
forward, and ordered the chain to be hauled in short, so as to be ready
to trip the anchor and move the
69
steamboat
at once if necessary. 'Will they attack?' whispered an awed voice. 'We
will be all butchered in this fog,' murmured another. The faces
twitched with the strain, the hands trembled slightly, the eyes forgot to wink. It
was very curious to see the contrast of expressions of the white men
and of the black fellows of our crew, who were as much strangers to
that part of the river as we, though their homes were only eight
hundred miles away. The whites, of course greatly discomposed, had
besides a curious look of being painfully shocked by such an outrageous
row. The others had an alert, naturally interested expression; but
their faces were essentially quiet, even those of the one or two who
grinned as they hauled at the chain. Several exchanged short, grunting
phrases, which seemed to settle the matter to their satisfaction. Their
headman, a young, broadchested
black, severely draped in darkblue
fringed cloths, with fierce nostrils and his hair all done up artfully
in oily ringlets, stood near me. 'Aha!' I said, just for good
fellowship's sake. 'Catch 'im,'
he snapped, with a bloodshot widening of his eyes and a flash of sharp
teeth -'catch 'im. Give 'im to us. "To you, eh?' I asked;
'what would you do with them?' 'Eat 'im!'
he said curtly, and, leaning his elbow on the rail, looked
out into the fog in a dignified and profoundly pensive attitude. I
would no doubt have been properly horrified, had it not occurred to me
that he and his chaps must be very hungry: that they must have (50)
been growing increasingly hungry for at
least this month past. They had been engaged for six months (I don't
think a single one of them had any clear idea of time, as we at the end
of countless ages have. They still belonged to the beginnings of time
-had no inherited experience to teach them as it were), and of course,
as long as there was a piece of paper written over in accordance with
some farcical law or other (37) made
down the river, it didn't enter anybody's head to trouble how they
would live. Certainly they had brought with them some
70
rotten
hippo-meat, which couldn't have lasted very long, anyway, even if the
pilgrims hadn't, in the midst of a shocking hullabaloo, thrown a
considerable quantity of it overboard. It looked like a high-handed
proceeding; but it was really a case of legitimate self-defense. You
can't breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping, and eating, and at the same
time keep your precarious grip on existence. Besides that, they had
given them every week three pieces of brass wire, each about nine
inches long; and the theory was they were to buy their provisions with
that currency in riverside villages. You can see how that worked. There were either no villages, or
the people were hostile, or the director, who like the rest of us fed
out of tins, with an occasional old he-goat thrown in, didn't want to
stop the steamer for some more or less recondite reason. So, unless
they swallowed the wire itself, or made loops of it to snare the fishes
with, I don't see what good their extravagant salary could be to them.
I must say it was paid with a
regularity worthy of a large and honourable
trading company. For the rest, the only thing to eat -though it didn't
look eatable in the least -I saw in their possession was a few lumps of
some stuff like half-cooked dough, of a dirty lavender color, they kept
wrapped in leaves, and now and then swallowed a piece of, but so small
that it seemed done more for the looks of the thing than for any
serious purpose of sustenance. Why
in the name of all the gnawing devils of hunger they didn't go for us
-they were thirty to five -and have a good tuck-in for once, amazes me now when I think of it.
They were big powerful men, with not much capacity to weigh the
consequences, with courage, with strength, even yet, though their skins
were no longer glossy and their muscles no longer (51) hard.
And I saw that something restraining, one of those human secrets that
baffle probability, had come into play there. I looked at them with a
71
swift
quickening of interest -not because it occurred to me I might be eaten
by them before very long, though I own to you that just then
I perceived -in a new light, as it were -how unwholesome the
pilgrims looked, and I hoped, yes, I positively hoped, that my aspect
was not so -what shall I say? -so
-unappetizing: a touch of fantastic vanity which fitted well with the
dream-sensation that pervaded all my days at that time. Perhaps I had a
little fever, too. One can't live with one's finger everlastingly on
one's pulse. I had often 'a little fever,' or a little touch of other
things -the playful paw-strokes of the wilderness, the preliminary
trifling before the more serious onslaught which came in due course. Yes;
I looked at them as you would on any human being, with a curiosity of
their impulses, motives, capacities, weaknesses, when brought to the
test of an inexorable physical necessity. Restraint! What
possible restraint? Was it superstition, disgust, patience, fear -or
some kind of primitive honor? (38)
No
fear can stand up to hunger, no
patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist
where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call
principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze. Don't you know the
devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating torment, its black
thoughts, its somber and
brooding ferocity? Well, I do. It takes a man all his inborn strength
to fight hunger properly. It's really easier to face bereavement,
dishonor, and the perdition of one's soul -than this kind of prolonged
hunger. Sad, but true. And these chaps, too, had no earthly reason for
any kind of scruple. Restraint! I would just as soon have
expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the corpses of a
battlefield. But there was the fact facing me -the fact dazzling, to be
seen, like the foam on the depths of the sea, like a ripple on an
unfathomable enigma, a mystery greater -when I thought of it -than the
curious, inexplicable note of desperate grief in this savage clamor
that had swept by us on the river-bank, behind the blind whiteness of
the fog.
72
"Two pilgrims were quarreling in hurried whispers as to
which bank. 'Left.' 'No,
no; how can you? Right, right, of (52)
course.' 'It is very serious,' said the manager's voice behind me; 'I
would be desolated if anything should happen to Mr. Kurtz before we
came up.' I looked at him, and had not the slightest doubt he was
sincere. He was just the kind of man who would wish to preserve
appearances. That was his restraint. But when he muttered something
about going on at once, I did not even take the trouble to answer him.
I knew, and he knew, that it was impossible. Were we to let go our hold
of the bottom, we would be absolutely in the air -in space. We wouldn't
be able to tell where we were going to -whether up or down stream, or
across -till we fetched against one bank or the other -and then we
wouldn't know at first which it was. Of course I made no move. I had no
mind for a smash-up. You couldn't imagine a more deadly place for a
shipwreck. Whether drowned at once or not, we were sure to perish
speedily in one way or another. 'I authorize you to take all the
risks,' he said, after a short silence. 'I refuse to take any,' I said
shortly; which was just the answer he expected, though its tone might
have surprised him. 'Well, I must defer to your judgment. You are
captain,' he said with marked civility. I turned my shoulder to him in
sign of my appreciation, and looked into the fog. How long would it
last? It was the most hopeless lookout. The approach to this Kurtz
grubbing for ivory in the wretched bush was beset by as many dangers as
though he had been an enchanted princess sleeping in a fabulous castle.
'Will they attack, do you think?' asked the manager, in a confidential
tone.
"I did not think they would attack, for several obvious
reasons. The thick fog was one. If they left the bank in their canoes
73
they
would get lost in it, as we would be if we attempted to move. Still, I
had also judged (39) the
jungle of both banks quite impenetrable -and yet eyes were in it, eyes
that had seen us. The riverside bushes were certainly very thick; but
the undergrowth behind was evidently penetrable. However, during the
short lift I had seen no canoes anywhere in the reach -certainly not
abreast of the steamer. But
what made the idea of attack inconceivable to me was the nature of the
noise -of the cries we had heard. They had not the fierce character
boding immediate hostile intention. Unexpected, wild, and
violent (53) as
they had been, they had given me an irresistible impression of sorrow.
The glimpse of the steamboat had for some reason filled those savages
with unrestrained grief. The danger, if any, I expounded,
was from our proximity to a great human passion let loose. Even extreme
grief may ultimately vent itself in violence -but more generally takes
the form of apathy....
"You should have seen the pilgrims stare! They had no
heart to grin, or even to revile me: but I believe they thought me gone
mad -with fright, maybe. I delivered a regular lecture. My dear boys,
it was no good bothering. Keep a lookout? Well, you may guess I watched
the fog for the signs of lifting as a cat watches a mouse; but for
anything else our eyes were of no more use to us than if we had been
buried miles deep in a heap of cotton-wool. It felt like it, too
-choking, warm, stifling.
Besides, all I said, though it sounded extravagant, was absolutely true
to fact. What we afterwards alluded to as an attack was really an
attempt at repulse. The action was very far from being aggressive -it
was not even defensive, in the usual sense: it was undertaken under the
stress of desperation, and in its essence was purely protective.
"It developed itself, I should say, two hours after the
fog lifted, and its commencement was at a spot, roughly speaking,
74
about
a mile and a half below Kurtz's station. We had just floundered and
flopped round a bend, when I saw an
islet,
a mere grassy hummock of bright green, in the middle of
the stream. It was the only thing of the kind; but as we opened the
reach more, I perceived it was the head of a long sand-bank, or rather
of a chain of shallow patches stretching down the middle of the river.
They were discolored, just awash, and the whole lot was seen just under
the water, exactly as a man's backbone is seen running down the middle
of his back under the skin. Now, as far as I did see, I could go to the
right or to the left of this. I didn't know either channel, of course.
The banks looked pretty well alike, the depth appeared the same; but as
I had been informed the station was on the west side, I naturally
headed for the western passage.
"No
sooner had we fairly entered it than I became aware it was much
narrower than I had supposed. To the left of us there (54) was
the long uninterrupted shoal, and to the right a high, steep bank
heavily overgrown with bushes. Above the bush the trees stood in
serried ranks. The twigs (40)
overhung
the current thickly, and from distance to distance a large limb of some
tree projected rigidly over the stream. It was then well
on in the afternoon, the face of the forest was gloomy, and a broad
strip of shadow had already fallen on the water. In this shadow we
steamed up -very slowly, as you may imagine. I steered her well inshore
-the water being deepest near the bank, as the soundingpole
informed me.
"One of my hungry and forbearing friends was sounding in
the bows just below me. This
steamboat was exactly like a decked scow. On the deck, there were two
little teakwood houses, with doors and windows. The boiler was in the
fore-end, and the machinery right astern. Over the whole there was a
light roof, supported on stanchions. The funnel projected
75
through that roof, and in front
of the funnel a small cabin built of light planks served for a
pilot-house. It contained a couch, two camp-stools, a loaded Martini
Henry leaning in one corner, a tiny table, and the steering-wheel. It
had a wide door in front and a broad shutter at each side. All these
were always thrown open, of course. I spent my days perched up there on
the extreme fore-end of that roof, before the door. At night I slept,
or tried to, on the couch. An
athletic black belonging to some coast tribe and educated by my poor
predecessor, was the helmsman. He sported a pair of brass earrings,
wore a blue cloth wrapper from the waist to the ankles, and thought all
the world of himself. He was the most unstable kind of fool I had ever
seen. He steered with no end of a swagger while you were by; but if he
lost sight of you, he became instantly the prey of an abject funk, and
would let that cripple of a steamboat get the upper hand of him in a
minute.
"I
was looking down at the sounding-pole, and feeling much annoyed to see
at each try a little more of it stick out of that river, when I saw my poleman give up the business
suddenly, and stretch himself flat on the deck, without even taking the
trouble to haul his pole in. He kept hold on it though, and it trailed
in the water. At the same time the fireman, whom I could (55) also
see below me, sat down abruptly before his furnace and ducked his head.
I was amazed. Then I had to look at the river mighty quick, because
there was a snag in the fairway. Sticks, little
sticks, were flying about -thick: they were whizzing before my nose,
dropping below me, striking behind me against my pilot-house.
All this time the river, the shore, the woods, were very
quiet -perfectly quiet. I could only hear the heavy splashing thump of
the stern-wheel and the patter of these things. We cleared the snag
clumsily. Arrows, by Jove! We were being shot at!
I stepped in quickly to close the shutter on the landside. That
fool-helmsman, his hands on the spokes, was lifting his knees high,
stamping his feet,
76
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, (41)
looking
at me very fierce and steady; and then suddenly, as though a veil had
been removed from my eyes, I made out, deep in the tangled gloom, naked
breasts, arms, legs, glaring eyes -the bush was swarming with human
limbs in movement, glistening, of bronze color.
The twigs shook, swayed, and rustled, the arrows flew out of them, and
then the shutter came to. 'Steer her straight,' I said to the helmsman.
He held his head rigid, face forward; but his eyes rolled, he kept on
lifting and setting down his feet gently, his mouth foamed a little.
'Keep quiet!' I said in a fury. I might just as well have ordered a
tree not to sway in the wind.
I darted out. Below me there was a great scuffle of feet on the iron
deck; confused exclamations; a voice screamed, 'Can you turn back?' I
caught sight of a V-shaped ripple on the water ahead. What? Another
snag! A fusillade burst out under my feet. The pilgrims had
opened with their Winchesters, and were simply squirting lead into that
bush. A deuce of a lot of smoke came up and drove slowly
forward. I swore at it. Now I couldn't see the ripple or the snag
either. I stood in the doorway, peering, and the
arrows came in swarms. They might have been poisoned, but they looked
as though they wouldn't kill a cat.
The bush began to howl. Our wood-cutters raised a warlike whoop; the
report of a rifle just at my back deafened me. I glanced over my shoulder, and the (56)
pilot-house was yet full of noise and smoke when I made a dash at the
wheel. The fool-nigger had dropped everything, to throw the
shutter open and let off that Martini-Henry. He stood before
the wide opening, glaring, and I yelled at him to come back, while I
straightened the sudden twist out of that steamboat. There
was no room to turn even if I had wanted to,
77
the snag was somewhere very near
ahead in that confounded smoke, there was no time to lose, so I just
crowded her into the bank -right into the bank, where I knew the water
was deep. "We tore slowly along the overhanging bushes in a whirl of
broken twigs and flying leaves. The fusillade below stopped short, as I
had foreseen it would when the squirts got empty. I threw my head back
to a glinting whizz that traversed the pilot-house, in at one
shutter-hole and out at the other. Looking past that mad helmsman, who
was shaking the empty rifle and yelling at the shore, I saw vague forms
of men running bent double, leaping, gliding, distinct, incomplete, evanescent. Something
big appeared in the air before the shutter, the rifle went overboard,
and the man stepped back swiftly, looked at me over his shoulder in an
extraordinary, profound, familiar manner, and fell upon my feet. The
side of his head hit the wheel twice, and the end of what appeared a
long cane clattered round and knocked over a little campstool. It
looked as though after wrenching that thing from somebody ashore he had
lost his balance in the effort. The
thin smoke had blown away, we were clear of the snag, and looking ahead
I (42)
could
see that in another hundred yards or so I would be free to sheer off,
away from the bank; but my feet felt so very warm and wet that I had to
look down. The man had rolled on his back and stared straight up at me;
both his hands clutched that cane. It
was the shaft of a spear that, either thrown or lunged through the
opening, had caught him in the side just below the ribs; the blade had
gone in out of sight, after making a frightful gash; my shoes were
full; a pool of blood lay very still, gleaming dark-red under the
wheel; his eyes shone with an amazing luster. The fusillade burst out
again. He looked at me anxiously, gripping the spear like something precious, with an air of being
afraid I would try to take it away from him. I had to make an (57) effort
to free my eyes from his gaze and attend to the steering.
78
With
one hand I felt above my head for the line of the steam whistle, and
jerked out screech after screech hurriedly. The tumult of angry and
warlike yells was checked instantly, and then from the depths of the
woods went out such a tremulous and prolonged wail of mournful fear and
utter despair as may be imagined to follow the flight of the last hope
from the earth.
There was a great commotion in the bush; the shower of arrows stopped,
a few dropping shots rang out sharply -then silence, in which the
languid beat of the stern-wheel came plainly to my ears. I put the helm
hard a-starboard at the moment when the pilgrim in pink pajamas, very
hot and agitated, appeared in the doorway. 'The manager sends me --' he
began in an official tone, and stopped short. 'Good God!' he said,
glaring at the wounded man.
"We
two whites stood over him, and his lustrous and inquiring glance
enveloped us both. I declare it looked as though he would presently put
to us some question in an understandable language; but he died without
uttering a sound, without moving a limb, without twitching a muscle. Only
in the very last moment, as though in response to some sign we could
not see, to some whisper we could not hear, he frowned heavily, and
that frown gave to his black death-mask an inconceivably somber,
brooding, and menacing expression. The luster of inquiring glance faded
swiftly into vacant glassiness. 'Can
you steer?' I asked the agent eagerly. He looked very dubious; but I
made a grab at his arm, and he understood at once I meant him to steer
whether or no. To tell you the truth, I was morbidly anxious to change
my shoes and socks. 'He is dead,' murmured the fellow, immensely
impressed. 'No doubt about it,' said I, tugging like mad at the shoe
laces. 'And by the way, I suppose Mr.
Kurtz
is dead as well by this time.'
79
"For
the moment that was the dominant thought. There was a sense of extreme
disappointment, as though I had found out I had been striving after
something altogether without a substance. I
couldn't have been more disgusted if I had traveled all this way for
the sole purpose of talking with (43)
Mr.
Kurtz. Talking with . . . I flung one shoe
overboard, and became aware (58)
that that was exactly what I had been looking
forward to - a talk with Kurtz. I made the strange discovery
that I had never imagined him as doing, you know, but as discoursing. I
didn't say to myself, 'Now I will never see him,'
or 'Now I will never shake him by the hand,' but, 'Now I
will never hear him.' The man presented himself as a voice. Not
of course that I did not connect him with some sort of action. Hadn't I
been told in all the tones of jealousy and admiration that he had
collected, bartered, swindled, or stolen more ivory than all the other
agents together? That was not the point. The point was in his being a
gifted creature, and that of all his gifts the one that stood out
preeminently, that carried with it a sense of real presence, was his
ability to talk, his words - the gift of expression, the bewildering,
the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible, the
pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from the heart of an
impenetrable darkness.
"The
other shoe went flying unto the devil-god of that river. I thought, 'By
Jove! it's all over. We
are too late; he has vanished -the gift has vanished, by means of some
spear, arrow, or club. I will never hear that chap speak
after all' -and my sorrow had a startling extravagance of emotion, even
such as I had noticed in the howling sorrow of these savages in the
bush. I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow,
had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life.... Why
do you sigh in this beastly way, somebody? Absurd? Well, absurd. Good
Lord! mustn't a man ever
-Here, give me some tobacco."...
80
There
was a pause of profound stillness, then a match flared, and Marlow's
lean face appeared, worn, hollow, with downward folds and dropped
eyelids, with an aspect of concentrated attention; and as he
took vigorous draws at his pipe, it seemed to retreat and advance out
of the night in the regular flicker of tiny flame. The match went out.
"Absurd!" he cried. "This is the worst of trying to
tell.... Here you all are, each moored with two good addresses, like a
hulk with two anchors, a butcher round one corner, a policeman round
another, excellent appetites, and temperature normal -you hear -normal
from year's end to year's end. (59) And
you say, Absurd! Absurd be -exploded! Absurd! My dear boys, what can
you expect from a man who out of sheer nervousness had just flung
overboard a pair of new shoes! Now I think of it, it is
amazing I did not shed tears. I am, upon the whole, proud of my
fortitude. I
was cut to the quick at the idea of having lost the inestimable
privilege of listening to the gifted Kurtz. Of course I was wrong. The
privilege was waiting for me. Oh, yes, I heard more than enough. And I
was right, too. A voice. He was very little more than a
voice. And I heard -him -it -this voice -other voices -all of them were
so little more than voices -and the memory of (44)
that
time itself lingers around me, impalpable, like a dying vibration of
one immense jabber, silly, atrocious, sordid, savage, or simply mean,
without any kind of sense. Voices,
voices -even the girl herself -now --"
He
was silent for a long time.
"I
laid the ghost of his gifts at last with a lie," he began,
suddenly. "Girl! What? Did I mention a girl? Oh, she is out of it
-completely. They -the women I mean -are out of it -should be out of
it. We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own,
lest ours gets worse. Oh, she had to be out of it. You
should have heard the disinterred body of Mr. Kurtz
81
saying,
'My
Intended.' You
would have perceived directly then how completely she was out of it.
And the lofty frontal bone of Mr. Kurtz! They say the hair goes on
growing sometimes, but this -ah -specimen, was impressively bald. The wilderness had patted him on the head, and,
behold, it was like a ball -an ivory ball; it had caressed
him, and -lo! -he had withered; it had taken him, loved him, embraced
him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its
own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation. He was
its spoiled and pampered favorite. Ivory? I should think so. Heaps of
it, stacks of it. The old mud shanty was bursting with it.
You would
think there was not a single tusk left either above or below the ground
in the whole country. 'Mostly fossil,' the manager had
remarked, disparagingly. It was no more fossil
than I am; but they call it fossil when it is dug up. It appears these
niggers do bury the tusks sometimes -but evidently they couldn't bury
this parcel deep enough to save the gifted Mr. Kurtz from his (60)
fate. We filled the steamboat with it, and
had to pile a lot on the deck. Thus he could see and enjoy as long as
he could see, because the appreciation of this favor had remained with
him to the last. You should have heard him say, 'My ivory.' Oh, yes, I
heard him. 'My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my --'
everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of
hearing the wilderness burst into a prodigious peal of laughter that
would shake the fixed stars in their places. Everything belonged to him
-but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how
many powers of darkness claimed him for
their own. That was the reflection that made you creepy
all over. It was impossible -it was not good for one either -trying to
imagine. He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land -I
mean literally.
82
You
can't understand. How could you?-- with
solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbors ready to
cheer you or to fall on you, stepping delicately between the butcher
and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and
lunatic asylums -how can you imagine what
particular region of the first ages a man's untrammeled feet may take
him into by the way of solitude -utter solitude without a policeman -by
the way of silence -utter silence, (45)
where
no warning voice of a kind neighbor can be heard whispering of public
opinion? These little things make all the great difference. When they
are gone you must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your
own capacity for faithfulness.
Of course you may be too much of a fool to go wrong
-too dull even to know you are being assaulted by the powers of
darkness. I take it, no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the
devil; the fool is too much of a fool, or the devil too much of a devil
-I don't know which. Or you may
be such a thunderingly
exalted creature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but
heavenly sights and sounds. Then the earth for you is only a standing
place -and whether to be like this is your loss or your gain I won't
pretend to say. But most of us are neither one nor the other. The earth
for us is a place to live in, where we must put up with sights, with
sounds, with smells, too, by Jove! -breathe dead hippo, so to speak,
and not be contaminated. And there, (61) don't
you see? Your strength comes in, the faith in your ability for the
digging of unostentatious holes to bury the stuff in -your power of
devotion, not to yourself, but to an obscure back-breaking business.
And that's difficult enough. Mind, I am not trying to excuse or even
explain -I am trying to account to myself for -for -Mr. Kurtz -for the
shade of Mr. Kurtz. This initiated wraith from the back of Nowhere
honored me with its amazing confidence before it vanished altogether.
This was because it could speak English to me.
83
The
original Kurtz had been educated partly in England, and -as he was good
enough to say himself -his sympathies were in the right place. His
mother was half-English, his father was half-French. All
Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz; and by and by I learned
that, most appropriately, the International Society for the Suppression
of Savage Customs had entrusted him with the making of a report,
for its future guidance. And he had written it, too. I've seen it. I've
read it. It was eloquent, vibrating with eloquence, but too
high-strung, I think. Seventeen pages of close writing he had found
time for! But this must have been before his
-let us say -nerves, went wrong, and caused him to preside at certain
midnight dances ending with unspeakable rites, which -as far
as I reluctantly gathered from what I heard at various times -were
offered up to him -do you understand? -to Mr. Kurtz himself. But it was
a beautiful piece of writing. The opening paragraph, however, in the
light of later information, strikes me now as ominous. He
began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development
we had arrived at, 'must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the
nature of supernatural beings -we approach them with the might as of a
deity,' and so on, and so on. 'By the simple exercise of our will we
can exert a power for good practically unbounded,' etc.,
etc. From that point he soared and took me with him. The peroration was
magnificent, though difficult to remember, you know. (46)
It
gave me the notion of an exotic Immensity ruled by an august
Benevolence. It made me tingle with enthusiasm. This was the unbounded
power of eloquence -of words -of burning noble words. There were no
practical hints to interrupt the magic current of phrases, unless (62)
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
84
appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you,
luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: 'Exterminate
all the brutes!' The
curious part was that he had apparently forgotten all about that
valuable postscriptum,
because, later on, when he in a sense came to himself, he repeatedly
entreated me to take good care of 'my pamphlet' (he called it), as it
was sure to have in the future a good influence upon his career. I had
full information about all these things, and, besides, as it turned
out, I was to have the care of his memory. I've done enough for it to
give me the indisputable right to lay it, if I choose, for an
everlasting rest in the dust-bin of progress, amongst all the sweepings
and, figuratively speaking, all the dead cats of civilization. But
then, you see, I can't choose. He won't be forgotten. Whatever he was,
he was not common. He had the power to charm or frighten rudimentary
souls into an aggravated witch-dance in his honor; he could also fill
the small souls of the pilgrims with bitter misgivings: he had one
devoted friend at least, and he had conquered one soul in the world
that was neither rudimentary nor tainted with self-seeking. No;
I can't forget him, though I am not prepared to affirm the fellow was
exactly worth the life we lost in getting to him.
I missed my late helmsman awfully -I missed him even
while his body was still lying in the pilot-house. Perhaps
you will think it passing strange this regret for a savage who was no
more account than a grain of sand in a black Sahara. Well, don't you
see, he had done something, he had steered; for months I had him at my
back -a help -an instrument. It was a kind of partnership. He steered
for me -I had to look after him, I worried about his deficiencies, and
thus a subtle bond had been created, of which I only became aware when
it was suddenly broken. And the intimate profundity of that
look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my
memory -like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment.
85
"Poor
fool! If he had only left that shutter alone. He
had no (63) restraint,
no restraint just like Kurtz -a tree swayed by the wind. As
soon as I had put on a dry pair of slippers, I dragged him out, after
first jerking the spear out of his side, which operation I confess I
performed with my eyes shut tight. His heels leaped together over the
little doorstep; his shoulders were pressed to my breast; I hugged him
from behind desperately. Oh! he
was heavy, heavy; heavier than any man on earth, I should imagine. Then
without more ado I tipped him overboard. The current snatched him (47)
as
though he had been a wisp of grass, and I saw the body roll over twice
before I lost sight of it for ever.
All the pilgrims and the manager were then
congregated on the awning-deck about the pilot-house, chattering at
each other like a flock of excited magpies, and there was a scandalized
murmur at my heartless promptitude. What they wanted to keep that body
hanging about for I can't guess. Embalm it, maybe. But I had also heard
another, and a very
ominous, murmur on the deck below. My friends the woodcutters were
likewise scandalized, and with a better show of reason -though I admit
that the reason itself was quite inadmissible. Oh, quite! I had made up
my mind that if my late helmsman was to be eaten, the fishes alone
should have him. He had been a very second-rate helmsman while alive,
but now he was dead he might have become a first-class temptation, and
possibly cause some startling trouble. Besides, I was anxious to take
the wheel, the man in pink pajamas showing himself a hopeless duffer at
the business.
"This I did directly the simple funeral was over. We
were going half-speed, keeping right in the middle of the stream, and I
listened to the talk about me. They had given up Kurtz, they had given
up the station; Kurtz was dead, and
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the station had been
burnt -and so on -and so on. The red-haired pilgrim was beside himself
with the thought that at least this poor Kurtz had been properly
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 (64)
rustled and flew, that almost all the
shots had gone too high. You can't hit anything unless you take aim and
fire from the shoulder; but these chaps fired from the hip with their
eyes shut. The retreat, I maintained -and I was right -was caused by
the screeching of the steam whistle. Upon this they forgot Kurtz, and
began to howl at me with indignant protests.
"The manager stood by the wheel murmuring confidentially
about the necessity of getting well away down the river before dark at
all events, when I
saw in the distance a clearing on the riverside and the outlines of
some sort of building. 'What's this?' I asked. He clapped his hands in
wonder. 'The station!' he cried. I edged in at once, still
going half-speed.
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