I
The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of
the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly
calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come
to and wait for the turn of the tide.
The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of
an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded
together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails
of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red
clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A
haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness.
The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed
condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest,
and the greatest, town on earth.
The Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We four
affectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to
seaward. On the whole river there was nothing that looked half so
nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness
personified. It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in
the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom.
Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond of
the sea. Besides holding our hearts together through long periods of
separation, it had the effect of making us tolerant of each other's
yarns--and even convictions. The Lawyer--the best of old fellows--had,
because of his many years and many virtues, the only cushion on deck,
and was lying on the only rug. The Accountant had brought out already a
box of dominoes, and was toying architecturally with the bones. Marlow
sat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the mizzen-mast. He had
sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect,
and, with his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembled an
idol. The Director, satisfied the anchor had good hold, made his way
aft and sat down amongst us. We exchanged a few words lazily. Afterwards
there was silence on board the yacht. For some reason or other we did
not begin that game of dominoes. We felt meditative, and fit for nothing
but placid staring. The day was ending in a serenity of still and
exquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a
speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on the
Essex marshes was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the wooded
rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds. Only the
gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches, became more somber
every minute, as if angered by the approach of the sun.
And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and
from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat,
as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that
gloom brooding over a crowd of men.
Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became less
brilliant but more profound. The old river in its broad reach rested
unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the
race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a
waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the
venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and
departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories. And
indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes,
"followed the sea" with reverence and affection, than to evoke the
great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidal
current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories
of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles
of the sea. It had known and served all the men of whom the nation is
proud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titled
and untitled--the great knights-errant of the sea. It had borne all the
ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from
the Golden Hind returning with her round flanks full of treasure, to be
visited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale,
to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests--and that never
returned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from
Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith--the adventurers and the settlers;
kings' ships and the ships of men on 'Change; captains, admirals, the
dark "interlopers" of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned "generals"
of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all
had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch,
messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the
sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river
into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed
of commonwealths, the germs of empires.
The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear
along the shore. The Chapman lighthouse, a three-legged thing erect on a
mud-flat, shone strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairway--a great
stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper
reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on
the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.
"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places
of the earth."
He was the only man of us who still "followed the sea." The worst that
could be said of him was that he did not represent his class. He was a
seaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while most seamen lead, if one may
so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-home
order, and their home is always with them--the ship; and so is their
country--the sea. One ship is very much like another, and the sea is
always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign
shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past,
veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance;
for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself,
which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny.
For the rest, after his hours of work, a casual stroll or a casual spree
on shore suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole continent,
and generally he finds the secret not worth knowing. The yarns of seamen
have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the
shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity
to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not
inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it
out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these
misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination
of moonshine.
His remark did not seem at all surprising. It was just like Marlow.
It was accepted in silence. No one took the trouble to grunt even; and
presently he said, very slow--
"I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here,
nineteen hundred years ago--the other day. . . . Light came out of this
river since--you say Knights? Yes; but it is like a running blaze on
a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the
flicker--may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But
darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of
a fine--what d'ye call 'em?--trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered
suddenly to the north; run overland across the Gauls in a hurry; put in
charge of one of these craft the legionaries,--a wonderful lot of handy
men they must have been too--used to build, apparently by the hundred,
in a month or two, if we may believe what we read. Imagine him here--the
very end of the world, a sea the color of lead, a sky the color 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. Sandbanks, marshes,
forests, savages,--precious little to eat fit for a civilized man,
nothing but Thames water to drink. No Falernian wine here, no going
ashore. Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a
needle in a bundle of hay--cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and
death,--death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush. They must
have been dying like flies here. Oh yes--he did it. Did it very well,
too, no doubt, and without thinking much about it either, except
afterwards to brag of what he had gone through in his time, perhaps.
They were men enough to face the darkness. And perhaps he was cheered
by keeping his eye on a chance of promotion to the fleet at Ravenna
by-and-by, if he had good friends in Rome and survived the awful
climate. Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga--perhaps too
much dice, you know--coming out here in the train of some prefect, or
tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his fortunes. Land in a swamp,
march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the
utter savagery, had closed round him,--all that mysterious life of the
wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of
wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to
live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And
it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination
of the abomination--you know. Imagine the growing regrets, the longing
to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate."
He paused.
"Mind," he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of the
hand outwards, so that, with his legs folded before him, he had the
pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes and without a
lotus-flower--"Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves
us is efficiency--the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not
much account, really. They were no colonists; their administration was
merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors, and
for that you want only brute force--nothing to boast of, when you have
it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of
others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to
be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great
scale, and men going at it blind--as is very proper for those who tackle
a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking
it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter
noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too
much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not
a sentimental pretense but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the
idea--something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a
sacrifice to. . . ."
He broke off. Flames glided in the river, small green flames, red
flames, white flames, pursuing, overtaking, joining, crossing each
other--then separating slowly or hastily. The traffic of the great city
went on in the deepening night upon the sleepless river. We looked on,
waiting patiently--there was nothing else to do till the end of
the flood; but it was only after a long silence, when he said, in
a hesitating voice, "I suppose you fellows remember I did once turn
fresh-water sailor for a bit," that we knew we were fated, before
the ebb began to run, to hear about one of Marlow's inconclusive
experiences.
"I don't want to bother you much with what happened to me personally,"
he began, showing in this remark the weakness of many tellers of tales
who seem so often unaware of what their audience would best like to
hear; "yet to understand the effect of it on me you ought to know how I
got out there, what I saw, how I went up that river to the place where I
first met the poor chap. It was the farthest point of navigation and the
culminating point of my experience. It seemed somehow to throw a kind of
light on everything about me--and into my thoughts. It was somber enough
too--and pitiful--not extraordinary in any way--not very clear either.
No, not very clear. And yet it seemed to throw a kind of light.
"I had then, as you remember, just returned to London after a lot of
Indian Ocean, Pacific, China Seas--a regular dose of the East--six years
or so, and I was loafing about, hindering you fellows in your work and
invading your homes, just as though I had got a heavenly mission to
civilize you. It was very fine for a time, but after a bit I did get
tired of resting. Then I began to look for a ship--I should think the
hardest work on earth. But the ships wouldn't even look at me. And I got
tired of that game too.
"Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for
hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all
the glories of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces on
the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map
(but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and say, 'When
I grow up I will go there.' The North Pole was one of these places, I
remember. Well, I haven't been there yet, and shall not try now. The
glamour's off. Other places were scattered about the Equator, and in
every sort of latitude all over the two hemispheres. I have been in some
of them, and . . . well, we won't talk about that. But there was one
yet--the biggest, the most blank, so to speak--that I had a hankering
after.
"True, by this time it was not a blank space any more. It had got filled
since my boyhood with rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased to be
a blank space of delightful mystery--a white patch for a boy to dream
gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness. But there was in it
one river especially, a mighty big river, that you could see on the map,
resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its
body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the
depths of the land. And as I looked at the map of it in a shop-window,
it fascinated me as a snake would a bird--a silly little bird. Then I
remembered there was a big concern, a Company for trade on that river.
Dash it all! I thought to myself, they can't trade without using some
kind of craft on that lot of fresh water--steamboats! Why shouldn't I
try to get charge of one? I went on along Fleet Street, but could not
shake off the idea. The snake had charmed me.
"You understand it was a Continental concern, that Trading society; but
I have a lot of relations living on the Continent, because it's cheap
and not so nasty as it looks, they say.
"I am sorry to own I began to worry them. This was already a fresh
departure for me. I was not used to get things that way, you know. I
always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go. I
wouldn't have believed it of myself; but, then--you see--I felt somehow
I must get there by hook or by crook. So I worried them. The men said
'My dear fellow,' and did nothing. Then--would you believe it?--I tried
the women. I, Charlie Marlow, set the women to work--to get a job.
Heavens! Well, you see, the notion drove me. I had an aunt, a dear
enthusiastic soul. She wrote: 'It will be delightful. I am ready to do
anything, anything for you. It is a glorious idea. I know the wife of a
very high personage in the Administration, and also a man who has lots
of influence with,' &c., &c. She was determined to make no end of fuss
to get me appointed skipper of a river steamboat, if such was my fancy.
"I got my appointment--of course; and I got it very quick. It appears
the Company had received news that one of their captains had been killed
in a scuffle with the natives. This was my chance, and it made me the
more anxious to go. It was only months and months afterwards, when I
made the attempt to recover what was left of the body, that I heard the
original quarrel arose from a misunderstanding about some hens. Yes,
two black hens. Fresleven--that was the fellow's name, a Dane--thought
himself wronged somehow in the bargain, so he went ashore and started to
hammer the chief of the village with a stick. Oh, it didn't surprise
me in the least to hear this, and at the same time to be told that
Fresleven was the gentlest, quietest creature that ever walked on two
legs. No doubt he was; but he had been a couple of years already out
there engaged in the noble cause, you know, and he probably felt the
need at last of asserting his self-respect in some way. Therefore he
whacked the old nigger mercilessly, while a big crowd of his people
watched him, thunderstruck, till some man,--I was told the chief's
son,--in desperation at hearing the old chap yell, made a tentative jab
with a spear at the white man--and of course it went quite easy between
the shoulder-blades. Then the whole population cleared into the forest,
expecting all kinds of calamities to happen, while, on the other hand,
the steamer Fresleven commanded left also in a bad panic, in charge of
the engineer, I believe. Afterwards nobody seemed to trouble much
about Fresleven's remains, till I got out and stepped into his shoes. I
couldn't let it rest, though; but when an opportunity offered at last to
meet my predecessor, the grass growing through his ribs was tall enough
to hide his bones. They were all there. The supernatural being had not
been touched after he fell. And the village was deserted, the huts gaped
black, rotting, all askew within the fallen enclosures. A calamity
had come to it, sure enough. The people had vanished. Mad terror had
scattered them, men, women, and children, through the bush, and they had
never returned. What became of the hens I don't know either. I should
think the cause of progress got them, anyhow. However, through this
glorious affair I got my appointment, before I had fairly begun to hope
for it.
"I flew around like mad to get ready, and before forty-eight hours I
was crossing the Channel to show myself to my employers, and sign the
contract. In a very few hours I arrived in a city that always makes me
think of a whited sepulcher. Prejudice no doubt. I had no difficulty in
finding the Company's offices. It was the biggest thing in the town,
and everybody I met was full of it. They were going to run an over-sea
empire, and make no end of coin by trade.
"A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, high houses, innumerable
windows with venetian blinds, a dead silence, grass sprouting between
the stones, imposing carriage archways right and left, immense double
doors standing ponderously ajar. I slipped through one of these cracks,
went up a swept and ungarnished staircase, as arid as a desert, and
opened the first door I came to. Two women, one fat and the other slim,
sat on straw-bottomed chairs, knitting black wool. The slim one got up
and walked straight at me--still knitting with 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 colors of a rainbow. There was a vast amount of
red--good to see at any time, because one knows that some real work
is done in there, a deuce of a lot of blue, a little green, smears of
orange, and, on the East Coast, a purple patch, to show where the jolly
pioneers of progress drink the jolly lager-beer. However, I wasn't going
into any of these. I was going into the yellow. Dead in the center. And
the river was there--fascinating--deadly--like a snake. Ough! A door
opened, a white-haired secretarial head, but wearing a compassionate
expression, appeared, and a skinny forefinger beckoned me into the
sanctuary. Its light was dim, and a heavy writing-desk squatted in
the middle. From behind that structure came out an impression of pale
plumpness in a frock-coat. The great man himself. He was five feet
six, I should judge, and had his grip on the handle-end of ever so many
millions. He shook hands, I fancy, murmured vaguely, was satisfied with
my French. Bon voyage.
"In about forty-five seconds I found myself again in the waiting-room
with the compassionate secretary, who, full of desolation and sympathy,
made me sign some document. I believe I undertook amongst other things
not to disclose any trade secrets. Well, I am not going to.
"I began to feel slightly uneasy. You know I am not used to such
ceremonies, and there was something ominous in the atmosphere. It
was just as though I had been let into some conspiracy--I don't
know--something not quite right; and I was glad to get out. In the outer
room the two women knitted black wool feverishly. People were arriving,
and the younger one was walking back and forth introducing them. The
old one sat on her chair. Her flat cloth slippers were propped up on
a foot-warmer, and a cat reposed on her lap. She wore a starched
white affair on her head, had a wart on one cheek, and silver-rimmed
spectacles hung on the tip of her nose. She glanced at me above the
glasses. The swift and indifferent placidity of that look troubled me.
Two youths with foolish and cheery countenances were being piloted over,
and she threw at them the same quick glance of unconcerned wisdom. She
seemed to know all about them and about me too. An eerie feeling came
over me. She seemed uncanny and fateful. Often far away there I thought
of these two, guarding the door of Darkness, knitting black wool as for
a warm pall, one introducing, introducing continuously to the unknown,
the other scrutinizing the cheery and foolish faces with unconcerned old
eyes. Ave! Old knitter of black wool. Morituri te salutant. Not many of
those she looked at ever saw her again--not half, by a long way.
"There was yet a visit to the doctor. 'A simple formality,' assured me
the secretary, with an air of taking an immense part in all my sorrows.
Accordingly a young chap wearing his hat over the left eyebrow, some
clerk I suppose,--there must have been clerks in the business, though
the house was as still as a house in a city of the dead,--came from
somewhere up-stairs, and led me forth. He was shabby and careless, with
ink-stains on the sleeves of his jacket, and his cravat was large and
billowy, under a chin shaped like the toe of an old boot. It was a
little too early for the doctor, so I proposed a drink, and thereupon he
developed a vein of joviality. As we sat over our vermouths he glorified
the Company's business, and by-and-by I expressed casually my surprise
at him not going out there. He became very cool and collected all at
once. 'I am not such a fool as I look, quoth Plato to his disciples,'
he said sententiously, emptied his glass with great resolution, and we
rose.
"The old doctor felt my pulse, evidently thinking of something else
the while. 'Good, good for there,' he mumbled, and then with a certain
eagerness asked me whether I would let him measure my head. Rather
surprised, I said Yes, when he produced a thing like calipers and got
the dimensions back and front and every way, taking notes carefully. He
was an unshaven little man in a threadbare coat like a gaberdine, with
his feet in slippers, and I thought him a harmless fool. 'I always ask
leave, in the interests of science, to measure the crania of those going
out there,' he said. 'And when they come back, too?' I asked. 'Oh, I
never see them,' he remarked; 'and, moreover, the changes take place
inside, you know.' He smiled, as if at some quiet joke. 'So you are
going out there. Famous. Interesting too.' He gave me a searching
glance, and made another note. 'Ever any madness in your family?' he
asked, in a matter-of-fact tone. I felt very annoyed. 'Is that question
in the interests of science too?' 'It would be,' he said, without taking
notice of my irritation, 'interesting for science to watch the mental
changes of individuals, on the spot, but . . .' 'Are you an alienist?' I
interrupted. 'Every doctor should be--a little,' answered that original,
imperturbably. 'I have a little theory which you Messieurs who go out
there must help me to prove. This is my share in the advantages my
country shall reap from the possession of such a magnificent dependency.
The mere wealth I leave to others. Pardon my questions, but you are
the first Englishman coming under my observation. . . .' I hastened
to assure him I was not in the least typical. 'If I were,' said I,
'I wouldn't be talking like this with you.' 'What you say is rather
profound, and probably erroneous,' he said, with a laugh. 'Avoid
irritation more than exposure to the sun. Adieu. How do you English
say, eh? Good-by. Ah! Good-by. Adieu. In the tropics one must before
everything keep calm.' . . . He lifted a warning forefinger. . . . 'Du
calme, du calme. Adieu.'
"One thing more remained to do--say good-by to my excellent aunt. I
found her triumphant. I had a cup of tea--the last decent cup of tea for
many days--and in a room that most soothingly looked just as you would
expect a lady's drawing-room to look, we had a long quiet chat by the
fireside. In the course of these confidences it became quite plain to me
I had been represented to the wife of the high dignitary, and goodness
knows to how many more people besides, as an exceptional and gifted
creature--a piece of good fortune for the Company--a man you don't get
hold of every day. Good heavens! and I was going to take charge of a
two-penny-halfpenny river-steamboat with a penny whistle attached! It
appeared, however, I was also one of the Workers, with a capital--you
know. Something like an emissary of light, something like a lower sort
of apostle. There had been a lot of such rot let loose in print and talk
just about that time, and the excellent woman, living right in the rush
of all that humbug, got carried off her feet. She talked about 'weaning
those ignorant millions from their horrid ways,' till, upon my word, she
made me quite uncomfortable. I ventured to hint that the Company was run
for profit.
"'You forget, dear Charlie, that the laborer is worthy of his hire,' she
said, brightly. It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They
live in a world of their own, and there had never been anything like it,
and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to
set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded
fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of
creation would start up and knock the whole thing over.
"After this I got embraced, told to wear flannel, be sure to write
often, and so on--and I left. In the street--I don't know why--a queer
feeling came to me that I was an impostor. Odd thing that I, who used to
clear out for any part of the world at twenty-four hours' notice, with
less thought than most men give to the crossing of a street, had a
moment--I won't say of hesitation, but of startled pause, before this
commonplace affair. The best way I can explain it to you is by saying
that, for a second or two, I felt as though, instead of going to the
center of a continent, I were about to set off for the center of the
earth.
"I left in a French steamer, and she called in every blamed port they
have out there, for, as far as I could see, the sole purpose of landing
soldiers and custom-house officers. I watched the coast. Watching a
coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There
it is before you--smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or
savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, 'Come and find out.'
This one was almost featureless, as if still in the making, with
an aspect of monotonous grimness. The edge of a colossal jungle, so
dark-green as to be almost black, fringed with white surf, ran straight,
like a ruled line, far, far away along a blue sea whose glitter was
blurred by a creeping mist. The sun was fierce, the land seemed to
glisten and drip with steam. Here and there grayish-whitish specks
showed up, clustered inside the white surf, with a flag flying above
them perhaps. Settlements some centuries old, and still no bigger than
pin-heads on the untouched expanse of their background. We pounded
along, stopped, landed soldiers; went on, landed custom-house clerks to
levy toll in what looked like a God-forsaken wilderness, with a tin shed
and a flag-pole lost in it; landed more soldiers--to take care of the
custom-house clerks, presumably. Some, I heard, got drowned in the surf;
but whether they did or not, nobody seemed particularly to care. They
were just flung out there, and on we went. Every day the coast
looked the same, as though we had not moved; but we passed various
places--trading places--with names like Gran' Bassam Little Popo, names
that seemed to belong to some sordid farce acted in front of a sinister
backcloth. The idleness of a passenger, my isolation amongst all these
men with whom I had no point of contact, the oily and languid sea, the
uniform somberness of the coast, seemed to keep me away from the truth
of things, within the toil of a mournful and senseless delusion. The
voice of the surf heard now and then was a positive pleasure, like the
speech of a brother. It was something natural, that had its reason, that
had a meaning. Now and then a boat from the shore gave one a momentary
contact with reality. It was paddled by black fellows. You could see
from afar the white of their eyeballs glistening. They shouted, sang;
their bodies streamed with perspiration; they had faces like grotesque
masks--these chaps; but they had bone, muscle, a wild vitality, an
intense energy of movement, that was as natural and true as the surf
along their coast. They wanted no excuse for being there. They were a
great comfort to look at. For a time I would feel I belonged still to
a world of straightforward facts; but the feeling would not last long.
Something would turn up to scare it away. Once, I remember, we came upon
a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn't even a shed there, and
she was shelling the bush. It appears the French had one of their wars
going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles
of the long eight-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy,
slimy swell swung her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin
masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was,
incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the
eight-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little
white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble
screech--and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch
of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the
sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me
earnestly there was a camp of natives--he called them enemies!--hidden
out of sight somewhere.
"We gave her her letters (I heard the men in that lonely ship were dying
of fever at the rate of three a day) and went on. We called at some more
places with farcical names, where the merry dance of death and trade
goes on in a still and earthy atmosphere as of an overheated catacomb;
all along the formless coast bordered by dangerous surf, as if Nature
herself had tried to ward off intruders; in and out of rivers, streams
of death in life, whose banks were rotting into mud, whose waters,
thickened into slime, invaded the contorted mangroves, that seemed to
writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair. Nowhere did we
stop long enough to get a particularized impression, but the general
sense of vague and oppressive wonder grew upon me. It was like a weary
pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares.
"It was upward of thirty days before I saw the mouth of the big river.
We anchored off the seat of the government. But my work would not begin
till some two hundred miles farther on. So as soon as I could I made a
start for a place thirty miles higher up.
"I had my passage on a little sea-going steamer. Her captain was a
Swede, and knowing me for a seaman, invited me on the bridge. He was a
young man, lean, fair, and morose, with lanky hair and a shuffling gait.
As we left the miserable little wharf, he tossed his head contemptuously
at the shore. 'Been living there?' he asked. I said, 'Yes.' 'Fine lot
these government chaps--are they not?' he went on, speaking English
with great precision and considerable bitterness. 'It is funny what some
people will do for a few francs a month. I wonder what becomes of that
kind when it goes up country?' I said to him I expected to see that
soon. 'So-o-o!' he exclaimed. He shuffled athwart, keeping one eye ahead
vigilantly. 'Don't be too sure,' he continued. 'The other day I took
up a man who hanged himself on the road. He was a Swede, too.'
'Hanged himself! Why, in God's name?' I cried. He kept on looking
out watchfully. 'Who knows? The sun too much for him, or the country
perhaps.'
"At last we opened a reach. A rocky cliff appeared, mounds of turned-up
earth by the shore, houses on a hill, others, with iron roofs, amongst a
waste of excavations, or hanging to the declivity. A continuous noise of
the rapids above hovered over this scene of inhabited devastation. A
lot of people, mostly black and naked, moved about like ants. A jetty
projected into the river. A blinding sunlight drowned all this at times
in a sudden recrudescence of glare. 'There's your Company's station,'
said the Swede, pointing to three wooden barrack-like structures on the
rocky slope. 'I will send your things up. Four boxes did you say? So.
Farewell.'
"I came upon a boiler wallowing in the grass, then found a path
leading up the hill. It turned aside for the bowlders, and also for an
undersized railway-truck lying there on its back with its wheels in
the air. One was off. The thing looked as dead as the carcass of some
animal. I came upon more pieces of decaying machinery, a stack of rusty
rails. To the left a clump of trees made a shady spot, where dark things
seemed to stir feebly. I blinked, the path was steep. A horn tooted to
the right, and I saw the black people run. A heavy and dull detonation
shook the ground, a puff of smoke came out of the cliff, and that was
all. No change appeared on the face of the rock. They were building a
railway. The cliff was not in the way or anything; but this objectless
blasting was all the work going on.
"A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men
advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow,
balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept
time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, and
the short ends behind wagged to and fro like tails. I could see every
rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an
iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain
whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking. Another report
from the cliff made me think suddenly of that ship of war I had seen
firing into a continent. It was the same kind of ominous voice; but
these men could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies. They
were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting shells,
had come to them, an insoluble mystery from over the sea. All their
meager breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered,
the eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me within six inches,
without a glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy
savages. Behind this raw matter one of the reclaimed, the product of
the new forces at work, strolled despondently, carrying a rifle by its
middle. He had a uniform jacket with one button off, and seeing a white
man on the path, hoisted his weapon to his shoulder with alacrity. This
was simple prudence, white men being so much alike at a distance that
he could not tell who I might be. He was speedily reassured, and with a
large, white, rascally grin, and a glance at his charge, seemed to take
me into partnership in his exalted trust. After all, I also was a part
of the great cause of these high and just proceedings.
"Instead of going up, I turned and descended to the left. My idea was to
let that chain-gang get out of sight before I climbed the hill. You know
I am not particularly tender; I've had to strike and to fend off.
I've had to resist and to attack sometimes--that's only one way of
resisting--without counting the exact cost, according to the demands
of such sort of life as I had blundered into. I've seen the devil of
violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by
all the stars! these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed
and drove men--men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside, I
foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become
acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and
pitiless folly. How insidious he could be, too, I was only to find out
several months later and a thousand miles farther. For a moment I
stood appalled, as though by a warning. Finally I descended the hill,
obliquely, towards the trees I had seen.
"I avoided a vast artificial hole somebody had been digging on the
slope, the purpose of which I found it impossible to divine. It wasn't
a quarry or a sandpit, anyhow. It was just a hole. It might have
been connected with the philanthropic desire of giving the criminals
something to do. I don't know. Then I nearly fell into a very narrow
ravine, almost no more than a scar in the hillside. I discovered that
a lot of imported drainage-pipes for the settlement had been tumbled in
there. There wasn't one that was not broken. It was a wanton smash-up.
At last I got under the trees. My purpose was to stroll into the shade
for a moment; but no sooner within than it seemed to me I had stepped
into a gloomy circle of some Inferno. The rapids were near, and an
uninterrupted, uniform, headlong, rushing noise filled the mournful
stillness of the grove, where not a breath stirred, not a leaf moved,
with a mysterious sound--as though the tearing pace of the launched
earth had suddenly become audible.
"Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees, leaning against the
trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within
the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair.
Another mine on the cliff went off, followed by a slight shudder of the
soil under my feet. The work was going on. The work! And this was the
place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die.
"They were dying slowly--it was very clear. They were not enemies, they
were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now,--nothing but black
shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish
gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality
of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar
food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl
away and rest. These moribund shapes were free as air--and nearly as
thin. I began to distinguish the gleam of eyes under the trees. Then,
glancing down, I saw a face near my hand. The black bones reclined at
full length with one shoulder against the tree, and slowly the eyelids
rose and the sunken eyes looked up at me, enormous and vacant, a kind of
blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs, which died out slowly.
The man seemed young--almost a boy--but you know with them it's hard to
tell. I found nothing else to do but to offer him one of my good Swede's
ship's biscuits I had in my pocket. The fingers closed slowly on it and
held--there was no other movement and no other glance. He had tied a
bit of white worsted round his neck--Why? Where did he get it? Was it a
badge--an ornament--a charm--a propitiatory act? Was there any idea at
all connected with it? It looked startling round his black neck, this
bit of white thread from beyond the seas.
"Near the same tree two more bundles of acute angles sat with their legs
drawn up. One, with his chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing,
in an intolerable and appalling manner: his brother phantom rested its
forehead, as if overcome with a great weariness; and all about others
were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture
of a massacre or a pestilence. While I stood horror-struck, one of these
creatures rose to his hands and knees, and went off on all-fours towards
the river to drink. He lapped out of his hand, then sat up in the
sunlight, crossing his shins in front of him, and after a time let his
woolly head fall on his breastbone.
"I didn't want any more loitering in the shade, and I made haste towards
the station. When near the buildings I met a white man, in such an
unexpected elegance of get-up that in the first moment I took him for
a sort of vision. I saw a high starched collar, white cuffs, a light
alpaca jacket, snowy trousers, a clear 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 bookkeeping was done at this station.
He had come out for a moment, he said, 'to get a breath of fresh air.'
The expression sounded wonderfully odd, with its suggestion of sedentary
desk-life. I wouldn't have mentioned the fellow to you at all, only
it was from his lips that I first heard the name of the man who is
so indissolubly connected with the memories of that time. Moreover, I
respected the fellow. Yes; I respected his collars, his vast cuffs,
his brushed hair. His appearance was certainly that of a hairdresser's
dummy; but in the great demoralization of the land he kept up
his appearance. That's backbone. His starched collars and got-up
shirt-fronts were achievements of character. He had been out nearly
three years; and, later on, I could not help asking him how he managed
to sport such linen. He had just the faintest blush, and said modestly,
'I've been teaching one of the native women about the station. It
was difficult. She had a distaste for the work.' 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 sent into the depths of darkness, and in return came a
precious trickle of ivory.
"I had to wait in the station for ten days--an eternity. I lived in a
hut in the yard, but to be out of the chaos I would sometimes get into
the accountant's office. It was built of horizontal planks, and so badly
put together that, as he bent over his high desk, he was barred from
neck to heels with narrow strips of sunlight. There was no need to
open the big shutter to see. It was hot there too; big flies buzzed
fiendishly, and did not sting, but stabbed. I sat generally on the
floor, while, of faultless appearance (and even slightly scented),
perching on a high stool, he wrote, he wrote. Sometimes he stood up for
exercise. When a truckle-bed with a sick man (some invalided agent from
up-country) was put in there, he exhibited a gentle annoyance. 'The
groans of this sick person,' he said, 'distract my attention. And without
that it is extremely difficult to guard against clerical errors in this
climate.'
"One day he remarked, without lifting his head, 'In the interior you
will no doubt meet Mr. Kurtz.' On my asking who Mr. Kurtz was, he
said he was a first-class agent; and seeing my disappointment at
this information, he added slowly, laying down his pen, 'He is a very
remarkable person.' Further questions elicited from him that Mr. Kurtz
was at present in charge of a trading post, a very important one, in the
true ivory-country, at 'the very bottom of there. Sends in as much ivory
as all the others put together. . . .' He began to write again. The sick
man was too ill to groan. The flies buzzed in a great peace.
"Suddenly there was a growing murmur of voices and a great tramping of
feet. A caravan had come in. A violent babble of uncouth sounds burst
out on the other side of the planks. All the carriers were speaking
together, and in the midst of the uproar the lamentable voice of the
chief agent was heard 'giving it up' tearfully for the twentieth time
that day. . . . He rose slowly. 'What a frightful row,' he said. He
crossed the room gently to look at the sick man, and returning, said to
me, 'He does not hear.' 'What! Dead?' I asked, startled. 'No, not yet,'
he answered, with great composure. Then, alluding with a toss of the
head to the tumult in the station-yard, 'When one has got to make
correct entries, one comes to hate those savages--hate them to the
death.' He remained thoughtful for a moment. 'When you see Mr. Kurtz,'
he went on, 'tell him from me that everything here'--he glanced at the
desk--'is very satisfactory. I don't like to write to him--with those
messengers of ours you never know who may get hold of your letter--at
that Central Station.' He stared at me for a moment with his mild,
bulging eyes. 'Oh, he will go far, very far,' he began again. 'He
will be a somebody in the Administration before long. They, above--the
Council in Europe, you know--mean him to be.'
"He turned to his work. The noise outside had ceased, and presently
in going out I stopped at the door. In the steady buzz of flies the
homeward-bound agent was lying flushed and insensible; the other,
bent over his books, was making correct entries of perfectly correct
transactions; and fifty feet below the doorstep I could see the still
tree-tops of the grove of death.
"Next day I left that station at last, with a caravan of sixty men, for
a two-hundred-mile tramp.
"No use telling you much about that. Paths, paths, everywhere; a
stamped-in network of paths spreading over the empty land, through
long grass, through burnt grass, through thickets, down and up chilly
ravines, up and down stony hills ablaze with heat; and a solitude, a
solitude, nobody, not a hut. The population had cleared out a long
time ago. Well, if a lot of mysterious niggers armed with all kinds of
fearful weapons suddenly took to traveling on the road between Deal and
Gravesend, catching the yokels right and left to carry heavy loads for
them, I fancy every farm and cottage thereabouts would get empty very
soon. Only here the dwellings were gone too. Still I passed through
several abandoned villages. There's something pathetically childish in
the ruins of grass walls. Day after day, with the stamp and shuffle of
sixty pair of bare feet behind me, each pair under a 60-lb. load. Camp,
cook, sleep, strike camp, march. Now and then a carrier dead in harness,
at rest in the long grass near the path, with an empty water-gourd and
his long staff lying by his side. A great silence around and above.
Perhaps on some quiet night the tremor of far-off drums, sinking,
swelling, a tremor vast, faint; a sound weird, appealing, suggestive,
and wild--and perhaps with as profound a meaning as the sound of bells
in a Christian country. Once a white man in an unbuttoned uniform,
camping on the path with an armed escort of lank Zanzibaris, very
hospitable and festive--not to say drunk. Was looking after the upkeep
of the road, he declared. Can't say I saw any road or any upkeep, unless
the body of a middle-aged negro, with a bullet-hole in the forehead,
upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles farther on, may be
considered as a permanent improvement. I had a white companion too, not
a bad chap, but rather too fleshy and with the exasperating habit of
fainting on the hot hillsides, miles away from the least bit of shade
and water. Annoying, you know, to hold your own coat like a parasol over
a man's head while he is coming-to. I couldn't help asking him once what
he meant by coming there at all. 'To make money, of course. What do you
think?' he said, scornfully. Then he got fever, and had to be carried in
a hammock slung under a pole. As he weighed sixteen stone I had no end
of rows with the carriers. They jibbed, ran away, sneaked off with their
loads in the night--quite a mutiny. So, one evening, I made a speech in
English with gestures, not one of which was lost to the sixty pairs of
eyes before me, and the next morning I started the hammock off in front
all right. An hour afterwards I came upon the whole concern wrecked in
a bush--man, hammock, groans, blankets, horrors. The heavy pole had
skinned his poor nose. He was very anxious for me to kill somebody,
but there wasn't the shadow of a carrier near. I remembered the old
doctor,--'It would be interesting for science to watch the mental
changes of individuals, on the spot.' I felt I was becoming
scientifically interesting. However, all that is to no purpose. On the
fifteenth day I came in sight of the big river again, and hobbled into
the Central Station. It was on a back water surrounded by scrub and
forest, with a pretty border of smelly mud on one side, and on the three
others inclosed by a crazy fence of rushes. A neglected gap was all the
gate it had, and the first glance at the place was enough to let you see
the flabby devil was running that show. White men with long staves in
their hands appeared languidly from amongst the buildings, strolling up
to take a look at me, and then retired out of sight somewhere. One of
them, a stout, excitable chap with black mustaches, informed me with
great volubility and many digressions, as soon as I told him who I was,
that my steamer was at the bottom of the river. I was thunderstruck.
What, how, why? Oh, it was 'all right.' The 'manager himself' was there.
All quite correct. 'Everybody had behaved splendidly! splendidly!'--'you
must,' he said in agitation, 'go and see the general manager at once. He
is waiting!'
"I did not see the real significance of that wreck at once. I fancy I
see it now, but I am not sure--not at all. Certainly the affair was too
stupid--when I think of it--to be altogether natural. Still. . . . But
at the moment it presented itself simply as a confounded nuisance. The
steamer was sunk. They had started two days before in a sudden hurry
up the river with the manager on board, in charge of some volunteer
skipper, and before they had been out three hours they tore the bottom
out of her on stones, and she sank near the south bank. I asked myself
what I was to do there, now my boat was lost. As a matter of fact, I had
plenty to do in fishing my command out of the river. I had to set about
it the very next day. That, and the repairs when I brought the pieces to
the station, took some months.
"My first interview with the manager was curious. He did not ask me to
sit down after my twenty-mile walk that morning. He was commonplace in
complexion, in features, in manners, and in voice. He was of middle
size and of ordinary build. His eyes, of the usual blue, were perhaps
remarkably cold, and he certainly could make his glance fall on one as
trenchant and heavy as an ax. But even at these times the rest of his
person seemed to disclaim the intention. Otherwise there was only
an indefinable, faint expression of his lips, something stealthy--a
smile--not a smile--I remember it, but I can't explain. It was
unconscious, this smile was, though just after he had said something it
got intensified for an instant. It came at the end of his speeches like
a seal applied on the words to make the meaning of the commonest phrase
appear absolutely inscrutable. He was a common trader, from his youth
up employed in these parts--nothing more. He was obeyed, yet he inspired
neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That
was it! Uneasiness. Not a definite mistrust--just uneasiness--nothing
more. You have no idea how effective such a . . . a . . . faculty can
be. He had no genius for organizing, for initiative, or for order even.
That was evident in such things as the deplorable state of the station.
He had no learning, and no intelligence. His position had come to
him--why? Perhaps because he was never ill . . . He had served three
terms of three years out there . . . Because triumphant health in the
general rout of constitutions is a kind of power in itself. When he went
home on leave he rioted on a large scale--pompously. Jack ashore--with
a difference--in externals only. This one could gather from his casual
talk. He originated nothing, he could keep the routine going--that's
all. But he was great. He was great by this little thing that it was
impossible to tell what could control such a man. He never gave that
secret away. Perhaps there was nothing within him. Such a suspicion
made one pause--for out there there were no external checks. Once when
various tropical diseases had laid low almost every 'agent' in the
station, he was heard to say, 'Men who come out here should have no
entrails.' He sealed the utterance with that smile of his, as though
it had been a door opening into a darkness he had in his keeping.
You fancied you had seen things--but the seal was on. When annoyed at
meal-times by the constant quarrels of the white men about precedence,
he ordered an immense round table to be made, for which a special house
had to be built. This was the station's mess-room. Where he sat was the
first place--the rest were nowhere. One felt this to be his unalterable
conviction. He was neither civil nor uncivil. He was quiet. He allowed
his 'boy'--an overfed young negro from the coast--to treat the white
men, under his very eyes, with provoking insolence.
"He began to speak as soon as he saw me. I had been very long on the
road. He could not wait. Had to start without me. The up-river stations
had to be relieved. There had been so many delays already that he did
not know who was dead and who was alive, and how they got on--and so on,
and so on. He paid no attention to my explanations, and, playing with
a stick of sealing-wax, repeated several times that the situation
was 'very grave, very grave.' There were rumors that a very important
station was in jeopardy, and its chief, Mr. Kurtz, was ill. Hoped it was
not true. Mr. Kurtz was . . . I felt weary and irritable. Hang Kurtz,
I thought. I interrupted him by saying I had heard of Mr. Kurtz on the
coast. 'Ah! So they talk of him down there,' he murmured to himself.
Then he began again, assuring me Mr. Kurtz was the best agent he had, an
exceptional man, of the greatest importance to the Company; therefore
I could understand his anxiety. He was, he said, 'very, very uneasy.'
Certainly he fidgeted on his chair a good deal, exclaimed, 'Ah, Mr.
Kurtz!' broke the stick of sealing-wax and seemed dumbfounded 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 could I tell,' I said. 'I hadn't even
seen the wreck yet--some months, no doubt.' All this talk seemed to me
so futile. 'Some months,' he said. 'Well, let us say three months before
we can make a start. Yes. That ought to do the affair.' I flung out
of his hut (he lived all alone in a clay hut with a sort of veranda)
muttering to myself my opinion of him. He was a chattering idiot.
Afterwards I took it back when it was borne in upon me startlingly
with what extreme nicety he had estimated the time requisite for the
'affair.'
"I went to work the next day, turning, so to speak, my back on that
station. In that way only it seemed to me I could keep my hold on the
redeeming facts of life. Still, one must look about sometimes; and then
I saw this station, these men strolling aimlessly about in the sunshine
of the yard. I asked myself sometimes what it all meant. They wandered
here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands, like a lot
of faithless pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten fence. The word 'ivory'
rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were
praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a
whiff from some corpse. By Jove! I've never seen anything so unreal in
my life. And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared
speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like
evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic
invasion.
"Oh, these months! Well, never mind. Various things happened. One
evening a grass shed full of calico, cotton prints, beads, and I don't
know what else, burst into a blaze so suddenly that you would have
thought the earth had opened to let an avenging fire consume all that
trash. I was smoking my pipe quietly by my dismantled steamer, and saw
them all cutting capers in the light, with their arms lifted high, when
the stout man with mustaches came tearing down to the river, a tin
pail in his hand, assured me that everybody was 'behaving splendidly,
splendidly,' dipped about a quart of water and tore back again. I
noticed there was a hole in the bottom of his pail.
"I strolled up. There was no hurry. You see the thing had gone off like
a box of matches. It had been hopeless from the very first. The flame
had leaped high, driven everybody back, lighted up everything--and
collapsed. The shed was already a heap of embers glowing fiercely. A
nigger was being beaten near by. They said he had caused the fire in
some way; be that as it may, he was screeching most horribly. I saw him,
later on, for several days, sitting in a bit of shade looking very sick
and trying to recover himself: afterwards he arose and went out--and
the wilderness without a sound took him into its bosom again. As I
approached the glow from the dark I found myself at the back of two men,
talking. I heard the name of Kurtz pronounced, then the words, 'take
advantage of this unfortunate accident.' One of the men was the manager.
I wished him a good evening. 'Did you ever see anything like it--eh? it
is incredible,' he said, and walked off. The other man remained. He was
a first-class agent, young, gentlemanly, a bit reserved, with a forked
little beard and a hooked nose. He was stand-offish with the other
agents, and they on their side said he was the manager's spy upon them.
As to me, I had hardly ever spoken to him before. We got into talk, and
by-and-by we strolled away from the hissing ruins. Then he asked me to
his room, which was in the main building of the station. He struck
a match, and I perceived that this young aristocrat had not only a
silver-mounted dressing-case but also a whole candle all to himself.
Just at that time the manager was the only man supposed to have any
right to candles. Native mats covered the clay walls; a collection of
spears, assegais, shields, knives was hung up in trophies. The business
intrusted to this fellow was the making of bricks--so I had been
informed; but there wasn't a fragment of a brick anywhere in the
station, and he had been there more than a year--waiting. It seems he
could not make bricks without something, I don't know what--straw maybe.
Anyways, it could not be found there, and as it was not likely to be
sent from Europe, it did not appear clear to me what he was waiting for.
An act of special creation perhaps. However, they were all waiting--all
the sixteen or twenty pilgrims of them--for something; and upon my word
it did not seem an uncongenial occupation, from the way they took it,
though the only thing that ever came to them was disease--as far as I
could see. They beguiled the time by backbiting and intriguing against
each other in a foolish kind of way. There was an air of plotting about
that station, but nothing came of it, of course. It was as unreal as
everything else--as the philanthropic pretense of the whole concern, as
their talk, as their government, as their show of work. The only real
feeling was a desire to get appointed to a trading-post where ivory
was to be had, so that they could earn percentages. They intrigued
and slandered and hated each other only on that account,--but as to
effectually lifting a little finger--oh, no. By heavens! there is
something after all in the world allowing one man to steal a horse while
another must not look at a halter. Steal a horse straight out. Very
well. He has done it. Perhaps he can ride. But there is a way of looking
at a halter that would provoke the most charitable of saints into a
kick.
"I had no idea why he wanted to be sociable, but as we chatted in there
it suddenly occurred to me the fellow was trying to get at something--in
fact, pumping me. He alluded constantly to Europe, to the people I was
supposed to know there--putting leading questions as to my acquaintances
in the sepulchral city, and so on. His little eyes glittered like
mica discs--with curiosity,--though he tried to keep up a bit of
superciliousness. At first I was astonished, but very soon I became
awfully curious to see what he would find out from me. I couldn't
possibly imagine what I had in me to make it worth his while. It was
very pretty to see how he baffled himself, for in truth my body was full
of chills, and my head had nothing in it but that wretched steamboat
business. It was evident he took me for a perfectly shameless
prevaricator. At last he got angry, and to conceal a movement of furious
annoyance, he yawned. I rose. Then I noticed a small sketch in oils,
on a panel, representing a woman, draped and blindfolded, carrying a
lighted torch. The background was somber--almost black. The movement of
the woman was stately, and the effect of the torchlight on the face was
sinister.
"It arrested me, and he stood by civilly, holding a half-pint champagne
bottle (medical comforts) with the candle stuck in it. To my question he
said Mr. Kurtz had painted this--in this very station more than a year
ago--while waiting for means to go to his trading-post. 'Tell me, pray,'
said I, 'who is this Mr. Kurtz?'
"'The chief of the Inner Station,' he answered in a short tone, looking
away. 'Much obliged,' I said, laughing. 'And you are the brickmaker of
the Central Station. Everyone knows that.' He was silent for a while.
'He is a prodigy,' he said at last. 'He is an emissary of pity, and
science, and progress, and devil knows what else. We want,' he began
to declaim suddenly, 'for the guidance of the cause intrusted to us by
Europe, so to speak, higher intelligence, wide sympathies, a singleness
of purpose.' 'Who says that?' I asked. 'Lots of them,' he replied. 'Some
even write that; and so _he_ comes here, a special being, as you ought
to know.' 'Why ought I to know?' I interrupted, really surprised. He
paid no attention. 'Yes. To-day he is chief of the best station, next
year he will be assistant-manager, two years more and . . . but I dare
say you know what he will be in two years' time. You are of the new
gang--the gang of virtue. The same people who sent him specially also
recommended you. Oh, don't say no. I've my own eyes to trust.' Light
dawned upon me. My dear aunt's influential acquaintances were producing
an unexpected effect upon that young man. I nearly burst into a laugh.
'Do you read the Company's confidential correspondence?' I asked. He
hadn't a word to say. It was great fun. 'When Mr. Kurtz,' I continued
severely, 'is General Manager, you won't have the opportunity.'
"He blew the candle out suddenly, and we went outside. The moon had
risen. Black figures strolled about listlessly, pouring water on
the glow, whence proceeded a sound of hissing; steam ascended in the
moonlight, the beaten nigger groaned somewhere. 'What a row the brute
makes!' said the indefatigable man with the mustaches, appearing
near us. 'Serve him right. Transgression--punishment--bang! Pitiless,
pitiless. That's the only way. This will prevent all conflagrations
for the future. I was just telling the manager . . .' He noticed my
companion, and became crestfallen all at once. 'Not in bed yet,'
he said, with a kind of servile heartiness; 'it's so natural. Ha!
Danger--agitation.' He vanished. I went on to the river-side, and
the other followed me. I heard a scathing murmur at my ear, 'Heap
of muffs--go to.' The pilgrims could be seen in knots gesticulating,
discussing. Several had still their staves in their hands. I verily
believe they took these sticks to bed with them. Beyond the fence the
forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the dim stir,
through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of
the land went home to one's very heart,--its mystery, its greatness,
the amazing reality of its concealed life. The hurt nigger moaned feebly
somewhere near by, and then fetched a deep sigh that made me mend my
pace away from there. I felt a hand introducing itself under my arm.
'My dear sir,' said the fellow, 'I don't want to be misunderstood, and
especially by you, who will see Mr. Kurtz long before I can have that
pleasure. I wouldn't like him to get a false idea of my
disposition. . . .'
"I let him run on, this _papier-mache_ Mephistopheles, and it seemed to
me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find
nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe. He, don't you see, had
been planning to be assistant-manager by-and-by under the present man,
and I could see that the coming of that Kurtz had upset them both not a
little. He talked precipitately, and I did not try to stop him. I had my
shoulders against the wreck of my steamer, hauled up on the slope like a
carcass of some big river animal. The smell of mud, of primeval mud,
by Jove! was in my nostrils, the high stillness of primeval forest was
before my eyes; there were shiny patches on the black creek. The moon
had spread over everything a thin layer of silver--over the rank grass,
over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than
the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a somber
gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur.
All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabbered about
himself. I wondered whether the stillness on the face of the immensity
looking at us two were meant as an appeal or as a menace. What were we
who had strayed in here? Could we handle that dumb thing, or would it
handle us? I felt how big, how confoundedly big, was that thing that
couldn't talk, and perhaps was deaf as well. What was in there? I could
see a little ivory coming out from there, and I had heard Mr. Kurtz was
in there. I had heard enough about it too--God knows! Yet somehow it
didn't bring any image with it--no more than if I had been told an angel
or a fiend was in there. I believed it in the same way one of you might
believe there are inhabitants in the planet Mars. I knew once a Scotch
sailmaker who was certain, dead sure, there were people in Mars. If you
asked him for some idea how they looked and behaved, he would get shy
and mutter something about 'walking on all-fours.' If you as much as
smiled, he would--though a man of sixty--offer to fight you. I would not
have gone so far as to fight for Kurtz, but I went for him near enough
to a lie. You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because
I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me.
There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies,--which is
exactly what I hate and detest in the world--what I want to forget.
It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do.
Temperament, I suppose. Well, I went near enough to it by letting the
young fool there believe anything he liked to imagine as to my influence
in Europe. I became in an instant as much of a pretense as the rest of
the bewitched pilgrims. This simply because I had a notion it somehow
would be of help to that Kurtz whom at the time I did not see--you
understand. He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name
any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see
anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain
attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation,
that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of
struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which
is of the very essence of dreams. . . ."
He was silent for a while.
". . . No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the
life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence,--that which
makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is
impossible. We live, as we dream--alone. . . ."
He paused again as if reflecting, then added--"Of course in this you
fellows see more than I could then. You see me, whom you know. . . ."
It had become so pitch dark that we listeners could hardly see one
another. For a long time already he, sitting apart, had been no more
to us than a voice. There was not a word from anybody. The others might
have been asleep, but I was awake. I listened, I listened on the watch
for the sentence, for the word, that would give me the clew to the
faint uneasiness inspired by this narrative that seemed to shape itself
without human lips in the heavy night-air of the river.
". . . Yes--I let him run on," Marlow began again, "and think what
he pleased about the powers that were behind me. I did! And there was
nothing behind me! There was nothing but that wretched, old, mangled
steamboat I was leaning against, while he talked fluently about 'the
necessity for every man to get on.' 'And when one comes out here, you
conceive, it is not to gaze at the moon.' Mr. Kurtz was a 'universal
genius,' but even a genius would find it easier to work with 'adequate
tools--intelligent men.' He did not make bricks--why, there was a
physical impossibility in the way--as I was well aware; and if he
did secretarial work for the manager, it was because 'no sensible man
rejects wantonly the confidence of his superiors.' Did I see it? I saw
it. What more did I want? What I really wanted was rivets, by heaven!
Rivets. To get on with the work--to stop the hole. Rivets I
wanted. There were cases of them down at the coast--cases--piled
up--burst--split! You kicked a loose rivet at every second step in that
station yard on the hillside. Rivets had rolled into the grove of death.
You could fill your pockets with rivets for the trouble of stooping
down--and there wasn't one rivet to be found where it was wanted. We had
plates that would do, but nothing to fasten them with. And every week
the messenger, a lone negro, letter-bag on shoulder and staff in hand,
left our station for the coast. And several times a week a coast caravan
came in with trade goods,--ghastly glazed calico that made you shudder
only to look at it, glass beads value about a penny a quart, confounded
spotted cotton handkerchiefs. And no rivets. Three carriers could have
brought all that was wanted to set that steamboat afloat.
"He was becoming confidential now, but I fancy my unresponsive attitude
must have exasperated him at last, for he judged it necessary to inform
me he feared neither God nor devil, let alone any mere man. I said I
could see that very well, but what I wanted was a certain quantity of
rivets--and rivets were what really Mr. Kurtz wanted, if he had only
known it. Now letters went to the coast every week. . . . 'My dear
sir,' he cried, 'I write from dictation.' I demanded rivets. There was
a way--for an intelligent man. He changed his manner; became very
cold, and suddenly began to talk about a hippopotamus; wondered whether
sleeping on board the steamer (I stuck to my salvage night and day)
I wasn't disturbed. There was an old hippo that had the bad habit of
getting out on the bank and roaming at night over the station grounds.
The pilgrims used to turn out in a body and empty every rifle they could
lay hands on at him. Some even had sat up o' nights for him. All this
energy was wasted, though. 'That animal has a charmed life,' he said;
'but you can say this only of brutes in this country. No man--you
apprehend me?--no man here bears a charmed life.' He stood there for
a moment in the moonlight with his delicate hooked nose set a little
askew, and his mica eyes glittering without a wink, then, with a curt
Good night, he strode off. I could see he was disturbed and considerably
puzzled, which made me feel more hopeful than I had been for days. It
was a great comfort to turn from that chap to my influential friend, the
battered, twisted, ruined, tin-pot steamboat. I clambered on board. She
rang under my feet like an empty Huntley & Palmer biscuit-tin kicked
along a gutter; she was nothing so solid in make, and rather less pretty
in shape, but I had expended enough hard work on her to make me love
her. No influential friend would have served me better. She had given
me a chance to come out a bit--to find out what I could do. No, I don't
like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that
can be done. I don't like work--no man does--but I like what is in the
work,--the chance to find yourself. Your own reality--for yourself, not
for others--what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere
show, and never can tell what it really means.
"I was not surprised to see somebody sitting aft, on the deck, with
his legs dangling over the mud. You see I rather chummed with the few
mechanics there were in that station, whom the other pilgrims naturally
despised--on account of their imperfect manners, I suppose. This was the
foreman--a boiler-maker by trade--a good worker. He was a lank, bony,
yellow-faced man, with big intense eyes. His aspect was worried, and his
head was as bald as the palm of my hand; but his hair in falling seemed
to have stuck to his chin, and had prospered in the new locality,
for his beard hung down to his waist. He was a widower with six young
children (he had left them in charge of a sister of his to come out
there), and the passion of his life was pigeon-flying. He was an
enthusiast and a connoisseur. He would rave about pigeons. After work
hours he used sometimes to come over from his hut for a talk about his
children and his pigeons; at work, when he had to crawl in the mud under
the bottom of the steamboat, he would tie up that beard of his in a kind
of white serviette he brought for the purpose. It had loops to go over
his ears. In the evening he could be seen squatted on the bank rinsing
that wrapper in the creek with great care, then spreading it solemnly on
a bush to dry.
"I slapped him on the back and shouted, 'We shall have rivets!' He
scrambled to his feet exclaiming 'No! Rivets!' as though he couldn't
believe his ears. Then in a low voice, 'You . . . eh?' I don't know why
we behaved like lunatics. I put my finger to the side of my nose and
nodded mysteriously. 'Good for you!' he cried, snapped his fingers above
his head, lifting one foot. I tried a jig. We capered on the iron deck.
A frightful clatter came out of that hulk, and the virgin forest on
the other bank of the creek sent it back in a thundering roll upon the
sleeping station. It must have made some of the pilgrims sit up in their
hovels. A dark figure obscured the lighted doorway of the manager's hut,
vanished, then, a second or so after, the doorway itself vanished too.
We stopped, and the silence driven away by the stamping of our feet
flowed back again from the recesses of the land. The great wall of
vegetation, an exuberant and entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves,
boughs, festoons, motionless in the moonlight, was like a rioting
invasion of soundless life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crested,
ready to topple over the creek, to sweep every little man of us out
of his little existence. And it moved not. A deadened burst of mighty
splashes and snorts reached us from afar, as though an ichthyosaurus had
been taking a bath of glitter in the great river. 'After all,' said the
boiler-maker in a reasonable tone, 'why shouldn't we get the rivets?'
Why not, indeed! I did not know of any reason why we shouldn't. 'They'll
come in three weeks,' I said confidently.
"But they didn't. Instead of rivets there came an invasion, an
infliction, a visitation. It came in sections during the next three
weeks, each section headed by a donkey carrying a white man in new
clothes and tan shoes, bowing from that elevation right and left to the
impressed pilgrims. A quarrelsome band of footsore sulky niggers trod on
the heels of the donkeys; 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
installments came, with their absurd air of disorderly flight with the
loot of innumerable outfit shops and provision stores, that, one
would think, they were lugging, after a raid, into the wilderness for
equitable division. It was an inextricable mess of things decent in
themselves but that human folly made look like the spoils of thieving.
"This devoted band called itself the Eldorado Exploring Expedition, and
I believe they were sworn to secrecy. Their talk, however, was the talk
of sordid buccaneers: it was reckless without hardihood, greedy without
audacity, and cruel without courage; there was not an atom of foresight
or of serious intention in the whole batch of them, and they did not
seem aware these things are wanted for the work of the world. To tear
treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more
moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into
a safe. Who paid the expenses of the noble enterprise I don't know; but
the uncle of our manager was leader of that lot.
"In exterior he resembled a butcher in a poor neighborhood, and his eyes
had a look of sleepy cunning. He carried his fat paunch with ostentation
on his short legs, and during the time his gang infested the station
spoke to no one but his nephew. You could see these two roaming about
all day long with their heads close together in an everlasting confab.
"I had given up worrying myself about the rivets. One's capacity for
that kind of folly is more limited than you would suppose. I said
Hang!--and let things slide. I had plenty of time for meditation,
and now and then I would give some thought to Kurtz. I wasn't very
interested in him. No. Still, I was curious to see whether this man, who
had come out equipped with moral ideas of some sort, would climb to the
top after all, and how he would set about his work when there."