“The old doctor felt my pulse, evidently thinking of somethi

Heart of Darkness

by Joseph Conrad

Contents

I

II

III

I

The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of

the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly

calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come

to and wait for the turn of the tide.

The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of

an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded

together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of

the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red

clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A

haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing

flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still

seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the

biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.

The Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We four

affectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to

seaward. On the whole river there was nothing that looked half so

nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness

personified. It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in

the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom.

Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond of the

sea. Besides holding our hearts together through long periods of

separation, it had the effect of making us tolerant of each other’s

yarns—and even convictions. The Lawyer—the best of old fellows—had,

because of his many years and many virtues, the only cushion on deck,

and was lying on the only rug. The Accountant had brought out already a

box of dominoes, and was toying architecturally with the bones. Marlow

sat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the mizzen-mast. He had

sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect,

and, with his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembled an

idol. The director, satisfied the anchor had good hold, made his way

aft and sat down amongst us. We exchanged a few words lazily.

Afterwards there was silence on board the yacht. For some reason or

other we did not begin that game of dominoes. We felt meditative, and

fit for nothing but placid staring. The day was ending in a serenity of

still and exquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically; the sky,

without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very

mist on the Essex marsh was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from

the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous

folds. Only the gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches,

became more sombre every minute, as if angered by the approach of the

sun.

And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low,

and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without

heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of

that gloom brooding over a crowd of men.

Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became less

brilliant but more profound. The old river in its broad reach rested

unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the

race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a

waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the

venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and

departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories. And

indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes,

“followed the sea” with reverence and affection, 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 rotund flanks full

of treasure, to be visited by the Queen’s Highness and thus pass out of

the gigantic tale, to the _Erebus_ and _Terror_, bound on other

conquests—and that never returned. It had known the ships and the men.

They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith—the

adventurers and the settlers; kings’ ships and the ships of men on

’Change; captains, admirals, the dark “interlopers” of the Eastern

trade, and the commissioned “generals” of East India fleets. Hunters

for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream,

bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within

the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had

not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown

earth!... The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of

empires.

The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear

along the shore. The Chapman light-house, a three-legged thing erect on

a mud-flat, shone strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairway—a

great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the

upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked

ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under

the stars.

“And this also,” said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places

of the earth.”

He was the only man of us who still “followed the sea.” The worst that

could be said of him was that he did not represent his class. He was a

seaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while most seamen lead, if one may

so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-home

order, and their home is always with them—the ship; and so is their

country—the sea. One ship is very much like another, and the sea is

always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign

shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past,

veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful

ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the

sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable

as Destiny. For the rest, after his hours of work, a casual stroll or a

casual spree on shore suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole

continent, and generally he finds the secret not worth knowing. The

yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which

lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if

his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an

episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale

which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness

of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the

spectral illumination of moonshine.

His remark did not seem at all surprising. It was just like Marlow. It

was accepted in silence. No one took the trouble to grunt even; and

presently he said, very slow—“I was thinking of very old times, when

the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago—the other day

.... Light came out of this river since—you say Knights? Yes; but it is

like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the

clouds. We live in the flicker—may it last as long as the old earth

keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of

a commander of a fine—what d’ye call ’em?—trireme in the Mediterranean,

ordered suddenly to the north; run overland across the Gauls in a

hurry; put in charge of one of these craft the legionaries—a wonderful

lot of handy men they must have been, too—used to build, apparently by

the hundred, in a month or two, if we may believe what we read. Imagine

him here—the very end of the world, a sea the colour of lead, a sky the

colour of smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina—and

going up this river with stores, or orders, or what you like.

Sand-banks, marshes, forests, savages,—precious little to eat fit for a

civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink. No Falernian wine

here, no going ashore. Here and there a military camp lost in a

wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay—cold, fog, tempests,

disease, exile, and death—death skulking in the air, in the water, in

the bush. They must have been dying like flies here. Oh, yes—he did it.

Did it very well, too, no doubt, and without thinking much about it

either, except afterwards to brag of what he had gone through in his

time, perhaps. They were men enough to face the darkness. And perhaps

he was cheered by keeping his eye on a chance of promotion to the fleet

at Ravenna by and by, if he had good friends in Rome and survived the

awful climate. Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga—perhaps too

much dice, you know—coming out here in the train of some prefect, or

tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his fortunes. Land in a swamp,

march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the

utter savagery, had closed round him—all that mysterious life of the

wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of

wild men. There’s no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to

live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable.

And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The

fascination of the abomination—you know, imagine the growing regrets,

the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate.”

He paused.

“Mind,” he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of the

hand outwards, so that, with his legs folded before him, he had the

pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes and without a

lotus-flower—“Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves

us is efficiency—the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not

much account, really. They were no colonists; their administration was

merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors,

and for that you want only brute force—nothing to boast of, when you

have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the

weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of

what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated

murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind—as is very proper

for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which

mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different

complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty

thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only.

An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and

an unselfish belief in the idea—something you can set up, and bow down

before, and offer a sacrifice to....”

He broke off. Flames glided in the river, small green flames, red

flames, white flames, pursuing, overtaking, joining, crossing each

other—then separating slowly or hastily. The traffic of the great city

went on in the deepening night upon the sleepless river. We looked on,

waiting patiently—there was nothing else to do till the end of the

flood; but it was only after a long silence, when he said, in a

hesitating voice, “I suppose you fellows remember I did once turn

fresh-water sailor for a bit,” that we knew we were fated, before the

ebb began to run, to hear about one of Marlow’s inconclusive

experiences.

“I don’t want to bother you much with what happened to me personally,”

he began, showing in this remark the weakness of many tellers of tales

who seem so often unaware of what their audience would like best to

hear; “yet to understand the effect of it on me you ought to know how I

got out there, what I saw, how I went up that river to the place where

I first met the poor chap. It was the farthest point of navigation and

the culminating point of my experience. It seemed somehow to throw a

kind of light on everything about me—and into my thoughts. It was

sombre enough, too—and pitiful—not extraordinary in any way—not very

clear either. No, not very clear. And yet it seemed to throw a kind of

light.

“I had then, as you remember, just returned to London after a lot of

Indian Ocean, Pacific, China Seas—a regular dose of the East—six years

or so, and I was loafing about, hindering you fellows in your work and

invading your homes, just as though I had got a heavenly mission to

civilize you. It was very fine for a time, but after a bit I did get

tired of resting. Then I began to look for a ship—I should think the

hardest work on earth. But the ships wouldn’t even look at me. And I

got tired of that game, too.

“Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look

for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in

all the glories of exploration. At that time there were many blank

spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly

inviting on a map (but they all look that) I would put my finger on it

and say, ‘When I grow up I will go there.’ The North Pole was one of

these places, I remember. Well, I haven’t been there yet, and shall not

try now. The glamour’s off. Other places were scattered about the

hemispheres. I have been in some of them, and... well, we won’t talk

about that. But there was one yet—the biggest, the most blank, so to

speak—that I had a hankering after.

“True, by this time it was not a blank space any more. It had got

filled since my boyhood with rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased

to be a blank space of delightful mystery—a white patch for a boy to

dream gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness. But there was

in it one river especially, a mighty big river, that you could see on

the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the

sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail

lost in the depths of the land. And as I looked at the map of it in a

shop-window, it fascinated me as a snake would a bird—a silly little

bird. Then I remembered there was a big concern, a Company for trade on

that river. Dash it all! I thought to myself, they can’t trade without

using some kind of craft on that lot of fresh water—steamboats! Why

shouldn’t I try to get charge of one? I went on along Fleet Street, but

could not shake off the idea. The snake had charmed me.

“You understand it was a Continental concern, that Trading society; but

I have a lot of relations living on the Continent, because it’s cheap

and not so nasty as it looks, they say.

“I am sorry to own I began to worry them. This was already a fresh

departure for me. I was not used to get things that way, you know. I

always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go. I

wouldn’t have believed it of myself; but, then—you see—I felt somehow I

must get there by hook or by crook. So I worried them. The men said ‘My

dear fellow,’ and did nothing. Then—would you believe it?—I tried the

women. I, Charlie Marlow, set the women to work—to get a job. Heavens!

Well, you see, the notion drove me. I had an aunt, a dear enthusiastic

soul. She wrote: ‘It will be delightful. I am ready to do anything,

anything for you. It is a glorious idea. I know the wife of a very high

personage in the Administration, and also a man who has lots of

influence with,’ etc. She was determined to make no end of fuss to get

me appointed skipper of a river steamboat, if such was my fancy.

“I got my appointment—of course; and I got it very quick. It appears

the Company had received news that one of their captains had been

killed in a scuffle with the natives. This was my chance, and it made

me the more anxious to go. It was only months and months afterwards,

when I made the attempt to recover what was left of the body, that I

heard the original quarrel arose from a misunderstanding about some

hens. Yes, two black hens. Fresleven—that was the fellow’s name, a

Dane—thought himself wronged somehow in the bargain, so he went ashore

and started to hammer the chief of the village with a stick. Oh, it

didn’t surprise me in the least to hear this, and at the same time to

be told that Fresleven was the gentlest, quietest creature that ever

walked on two legs. No doubt he was; but he had been a couple of years

already out there engaged in the noble cause, you know, and he probably

felt the need at last of asserting his self-respect in some way.

Therefore he whacked the old nigger mercilessly, while a big crowd of

his people watched him, thunderstruck, till some man—I was told the

chief’s son—in desperation at hearing the old chap yell, made a

tentative jab with a spear at the white man—and of course it went quite

easy between the shoulder-blades. Then the whole population cleared

into the forest, expecting all kinds of calamities to happen, while, on

the other hand, the steamer Fresleven commanded left also in a bad

panic, in charge of the engineer, I believe. Afterwards nobody seemed

to trouble much about Fresleven’s remains, till I got out and stepped

into his shoes. I couldn’t let it rest, though; but when an opportunity

offered at last to meet my predecessor, the grass growing through his

ribs was tall enough to hide his bones. They were all there. The

supernatural being had not been touched after he fell. And the village

was deserted, the huts gaped black, rotting, all askew within the

fallen enclosures. A calamity had come to it, sure enough. The people

had vanished. Mad terror had scattered them, men, women, and children,

through the bush, and they had never returned. What became of the hens

I don’t know either. I should think the cause of progress got them,

anyhow. However, through this glorious affair I got my appointment,

before I had fairly begun to hope for it.

“I flew around like mad to get ready, and before forty-eight hours I

was crossing the Channel to show myself to my employers, and sign the

contract. In a very few hours I arrived in a city that always makes me

think of a whited sepulchre. Prejudice no doubt. I had no difficulty in

finding the Company’s offices. It was the biggest thing in the town,

and everybody I met was full of it. They were going to run an over-sea

empire, and make no end of coin by trade.

“A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, high houses, innumerable

windows with venetian blinds, a dead silence, grass sprouting 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 colours of a rainbow. There was a vast

amount of red—good to see at any time, because one knows that some real

work is done in there, a deuce of a lot of blue, a little green, smears

of orange, and, on the East Coast, a purple patch, to show where the

jolly pioneers of progress drink the jolly lager-beer. However, I

wasn’t going into any of these. I was going into the yellow. Dead in

the centre. And the river was there—fascinating—deadly—like a snake.

Ough! A door opened, a white-haired secretarial head, but wearing a

compassionate expression, appeared, and a skinny forefinger beckoned me

into the sanctuary. Its light was dim, and a heavy writing-desk

squatted in the middle. From behind that structure came out an

impression of pale plumpness in a frock-coat. The great man himself. He

was five feet six, I should judge, and had his grip on the handle-end

of ever so many millions. He shook hands, I fancy, murmured vaguely,

was satisfied with my French. _Bon Voyage_.

“In about forty-five seconds I found myself again in the waiting-room

with the compassionate secretary, who, full of desolation and sympathy,

made me sign some document. I believe I undertook amongst other things

not to disclose any trade secrets. Well, I am not going to.

“I began to feel slightly uneasy. You know I am not used to such

ceremonies, and there was something ominous in the atmosphere. It was

just as though I had been let into some conspiracy—I don’t

know—something not quite right; and I was glad to get out. In the outer

room the two women knitted black wool feverishly. People were arriving,

and the younger one was walking back and forth introducing them. The

old one sat on her chair. Her flat cloth slippers were propped up on a

foot-warmer, and a cat reposed on her lap. She wore a starched white

affair on her head, had a wart on one cheek, and silver-rimmed

spectacles hung on the tip of her nose. She glanced at me above the

glasses. The swift and indifferent placidity of that look troubled me.

Two youths with foolish and cheery countenances were being piloted

over, and she threw at them the same quick glance of unconcerned

wisdom. She seemed to know all about them and about me, too. An eerie

feeling came over me. She seemed uncanny and fateful. Often far away

there I thought of these two, guarding the door of Darkness, knitting

black wool as for a warm pall, one introducing, introducing

continuously to the unknown, the other scrutinizing the cheery and

foolish faces with unconcerned old eyes. _Ave!_ Old knitter of black

wool. _Morituri te salutant_. Not many of those she looked at ever saw

her again—not half, by a long way.

“There was yet a visit to the doctor. ‘A simple formality,’ assured me

the secretary, with an air of taking an immense part in all my sorrows.

Accordingly a young chap wearing his hat over the left eyebrow, some

clerk I suppose—there must have been clerks in the business, though the

house was as still as a house in a city of the dead—came from somewhere

up-stairs, and led me forth. He was shabby and careless, with inkstains

on the sleeves of his jacket, and his cravat was large and billowy,

under a chin shaped like the toe of an old boot. It was a little too

early for the doctor, so I proposed a drink, and thereupon he developed

a vein of joviality. As we sat over our vermouths he glorified the

Company’s business, and by and by I expressed casually my surprise at

him not going out there. He became very cool and collected all at once.

‘I am not such a fool as I look, quoth Plato to his disciples,’ he said

sententiously, emptied his glass with great resolution, and we rose.

“The old doctor felt my pulse, evidently thinking of something else the

while. ‘Good, good for there,’ he mumbled, and then with a certain

eagerness asked me whether I would let him measure my head. Rather

surprised, I said Yes, when he produced a thing like calipers and got

the dimensions back and front and every way, taking notes carefully. He

was an unshaven little man in a threadbare coat like a gaberdine, with

his feet in slippers, and I thought him a harmless fool. ‘I always ask

leave, in the interests of science, to measure the crania of those

going out there,’ he said. ‘And when they come back, too?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I never see them,’ he remarked; ‘and, moreover, the changes take

place inside, you know.’ He smiled, as if at some quiet joke. ‘So you

are going out there. Famous. Interesting, too.’ He gave me a searching

glance, and made another note. ‘Ever any madness in your family?’ he

asked, in a matter-of-fact tone. I felt very annoyed. ‘Is that question

in the interests of science, too?’ ‘It would be,’ he said, without

taking notice of my irritation, ‘interesting for science to watch the

mental changes of individuals, on the spot, but...’ ‘Are you an

alienist?’ I interrupted. ‘Every doctor should be—a little,’ answered

that original, imperturbably. ‘I have a little theory which you

messieurs who go out there must help me to prove. This is my share in

the advantages my country shall reap from the possession of such a

magnificent dependency. The mere wealth I leave to others. Pardon my

questions, but you are the first Englishman coming under my

observation...’ I hastened to assure him I was not in the least

typical. ‘If I were,’ said I, ‘I wouldn’t be talking like this with

you.’ ‘What you say is rather profound, and probably erroneous,’ he

said, with a laugh. ‘Avoid irritation more than exposure to the sun.

_Adieu_. How do you English say, eh? Good-bye. Ah! Good-bye. _Adieu_.

In the tropics one must before everything keep calm.’... He lifted a

warning forefinger.... ‘_Du calme, du calme_.’

“One thing more remained to do—say good-bye to my excellent aunt. I

found her triumphant. I had a cup of tea—the last decent cup of tea for

many days—and in a room that most soothingly looked just as you would

expect a lady’s drawing-room to look, we had a long quiet chat by the

fireside. In the course of these confidences it became quite plain to

me I had been represented to the wife of the high dignitary, and

goodness knows to how many more people besides, as an exceptional and

gifted creature—a piece of good fortune for the Company—a man you don’t

get hold of every day. Good heavens! and I was going to take charge of

a two-penny-half-penny river-steamboat with a penny whistle attached!

It appeared, however, I was also one of the Workers, with a capital—you

know. Something like an emissary of light, something like a lower sort

of apostle. There had been a lot of such rot let loose in print and

talk just about that time, and the excellent woman, living right in the

rush of all that humbug, got carried off her feet. She talked about

‘weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways,’ till, upon my

word, she made me quite uncomfortable. I ventured to hint that the

Company was run for profit.

“‘You forget, dear Charlie, that the labourer is worthy of his hire,’

she said, brightly. It’s queer how out of touch with truth women are.

They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything

like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they

were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some

confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the

day of creation would start up and knock the whole thing over.

“After this I got embraced, told to wear flannel, be sure to write

often, and so on—and I left. In the street—I don’t know why—a queer

feeling came to me that I was an imposter. Odd thing that I, who used

to clear out for any part of the world at twenty-four hours’ notice,

with less thought than most men give to the crossing of a street, had a

moment—I won’t say of hesitation, but of startled pause, before this

commonplace affair. The best way I can explain it to you is by saying

that, for a second or two, I felt as though, instead of going to the

centre of a continent, I were about to set off for the centre of the

earth.

“I left in a French steamer, and she called in every blamed port they

have out there, for, as far as I could see, the sole purpose of landing

soldiers and custom-house officers. I watched the coast. Watching a

coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There

it is before you—smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or

savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, ‘Come and find out.’

This one was almost featureless, as if still in the making, with an

aspect of monotonous grimness. The edge of a colossal jungle, so

dark-green as to be almost black, fringed with white surf, ran

straight, like a ruled line, far, far away along a blue sea whose

glitter was blurred by a creeping mist. The sun was fierce, the land

seemed to glisten and drip with steam. Here and there greyish-whitish

specks showed up clustered inside the white surf, with a flag flying

above them perhaps. Settlements some centuries old, and still no bigger

than pinheads on the untouched expanse of their background. We pounded

along, stopped, landed soldiers; went on, landed custom-house clerks to

levy toll in what looked like a God-forsaken wilderness, with a tin

shed and a flag-pole lost in it; landed more soldiers—to take care of

the custom-house clerks, presumably. Some, I heard, got drowned in the

surf; but whether they did or not, nobody seemed particularly to care.

They were just flung out there, and on we went. Every day the coast

looked the same, as though we had not moved; but we passed various

places—trading places—with names like Gran’ Bassam, Little Popo; names

that seemed to belong to some sordid farce acted in front of a sinister

back-cloth. The idleness of a passenger, my isolation amongst all these

men with whom I had no point of contact, the oily and languid sea, the

uniform sombreness of the coast, seemed to keep me away from the truth

of things, within the toil of a mournful and senseless delusion. The

voice of the surf heard now and then was a positive pleasure, like the

speech of a brother. It was something natural, that had its reason,

that had a meaning. Now and then a boat from the shore gave one a

momentary contact with reality. It was paddled by black fellows. You

could see from afar the white of their eyeballs glistening. They

shouted, sang; their bodies streamed with perspiration; they had faces

like grotesque masks—these chaps; but they had bone, muscle, a wild

vitality, an intense energy of movement, that was as natural and true

as the surf along their coast. They wanted no excuse for being there.

They were a great comfort to look at. For a time I would feel I

belonged still to a world of straightforward facts; but the feeling

would not last long. Something would turn up to scare it away. Once, I

remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There

wasn’t even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It appears the

French had one of their wars going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped

limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long six-inch guns stuck out all

over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily and let

her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky,

and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent.

Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and

vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would

give a feeble screech—and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There

was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious

drollery in the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board

assuring me earnestly there was a camp of natives—he called them

enemies!—hidden out of sight somewhere.

“We gave her her letters (I heard the men in that lonely ship were

dying of fever at the rate of three a day) and went on. We called at

some more places with farcical names, where the merry dance of death

and trade goes on in a still and earthy atmosphere as of an overheated

catacomb; all along the formless coast bordered by dangerous surf, as

if Nature herself had tried to ward off intruders; in and out of

rivers, streams of death in life, whose banks were rotting into mud,

whose waters, thickened into slime, invaded the contorted mangroves,

that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair.

Nowhere did we stop long enough to get a particularized impression, but

the general sense of vague and oppressive wonder grew upon me. It was

like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares.

“It was upward of thirty days before I saw the mouth of the big river.

We anchored off the seat of the government. But my work would not begin

till some two hundred miles farther on. So as soon as I could I made a

start for a place thirty miles higher up.

“I had my passage on a little sea-going steamer. Her captain was a

Swede, and knowing me for a seaman, invited me on the bridge. He was a

young man, lean, fair, and morose, with lanky hair and a shuffling

gait. As we left the miserable little wharf, he tossed his head

contemptuously at the shore. ‘Been living there?’ he asked. I said,

‘Yes.’ ‘Fine lot these government chaps—are they not?’ he went on,

speaking English with great precision and considerable bitterness. ‘It

is funny what some people will do for a few francs a month. I wonder

what becomes of that kind when it goes upcountry?’ I said to him I

expected to see that soon. ‘So-o-o!’ he exclaimed. He shuffled athwart,

keeping one eye ahead vigilantly. ‘Don’t be too sure,’ he continued.

‘The other day I took up a man who hanged himself on the road. He was a

Swede, too.’ ‘Hanged himself! Why, in God’s name?’ I cried. He kept on

looking out watchfully. ‘Who knows? The sun too much for him, or the

country perhaps.’

“At last we opened a reach. A rocky cliff appeared, mounds of turned-up

earth by the shore, houses on a hill, others with iron roofs, amongst a

waste of excavations, or hanging to the declivity. A continuous noise

of the rapids above hovered over this scene of inhabited devastation. A

lot of people, mostly black and naked, moved about like ants. A jetty

projected into the river. A blinding sunlight drowned all this at times

in a sudden recrudescence of glare. ‘There’s your Company’s station,’

said the Swede, pointing to three wooden barrack-like structures on the

rocky slope. ‘I will send your things up. Four boxes did you say? So.

Farewell.’

“I came upon a boiler wallowing in the grass, then found a path leading

up the hill. It turned aside for the boulders, and also for an

undersized railway-truck lying there on its back with its wheels in the

air. One was off. The thing looked as dead as the carcass of some

animal. I came upon more pieces of decaying machinery, a stack of rusty

rails. To the left a clump of trees made a shady spot, where dark

things seemed to stir feebly. I blinked, the path was steep. A horn

tooted to the right, and I saw the black people run. A heavy and dull

detonation shook the ground, a puff of smoke came out of the cliff, and

that was all. No change appeared on the face of the rock. They were

building a railway. The cliff was not in the way or anything; but this

objectless blasting was all the work going on.

“A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men

advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow,

balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink

kept time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their

loins, and the short ends behind waggled to and fro like tails. I could

see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope;

each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together

with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking.

Another report from the cliff made me think suddenly of that ship of

war I had seen firing into a continent. It was the same kind of ominous

voice; but these men could by no stretch of imagination be called

enemies. They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the

bursting shells, had come to them, an insoluble mystery from the sea.

All their meagre breasts panted together, the violently dilated

nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me

within six inches, without a glance, with that complete, deathlike

indifference of unhappy savages. Behind this raw matter one of the

reclaimed, the product of the new forces at work, strolled

despondently, carrying a rifle by its middle. He had a uniform jacket

with one button off, and seeing a white man on the path, hoisted his

weapon to his shoulder with alacrity. This was simple prudence, white

men being so much alike at a distance that he could not tell who I

might be. He was speedily reassured, and with a large, white, rascally

grin, and a glance at his charge, seemed to take me into partnership in

his exalted trust. After all, I also was a part of the great cause of

these high and just proceedings.

“Instead of going up, I turned and descended to the left. My idea was

to let that chain-gang get out of sight before I climbed the hill. You

know I am not particularly tender; I’ve had to strike and to fend off.

I’ve had to resist and to attack sometimes—that’s only one way of

resisting—without counting the exact cost, according to the demands of

such sort of life as I had blundered into. I’ve seen the devil of

violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by

all the stars! these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed

and drove men—men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside, I

foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become

acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious

and pitiless folly. How insidious he could be, too, I was only to find

out several months later and a thousand miles farther. For a moment I

stood appalled, as though by a warning. Finally I descended the hill,

obliquely, towards the trees I had seen.

“I avoided a vast artificial hole somebody had been digging on the

slope, the purpose of which I found it impossible to divine. It wasn’t

a quarry or a sandpit, anyhow. It was just a hole. It might have been

connected with the philanthropic desire of giving the criminals

something to do. I don’t know. Then I nearly fell into a very narrow

ravine, almost no more than a scar in the hillside. I discovered that a

lot of imported drainage-pipes for the settlement had been tumbled in

there. There wasn’t one that was not broken. It was a wanton smash-up.

At last I got under the trees. My purpose was to stroll into the shade

for a moment; but no sooner within than it seemed to me I had stepped

into the gloomy circle of some Inferno. The rapids were near, and an

uninterrupted, uniform, headlong, rushing noise filled the mournful

stillness of the grove, where not a breath stirred, not a leaf moved,

with a mysterious sound—as though the tearing pace of the launched

earth had suddenly become audible.

“Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees leaning against the

trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within the

dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair.

Another mine on the cliff went off, followed by a slight shudder of the

soil under my feet. The work was going on. The work! And this was the

place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die.

“They were dying slowly—it was very clear. They were not enemies, they

were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now—nothing but black

shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish

gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality

of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar

food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl

away and rest. These moribund shapes were free as air—and nearly as

thin. I began to distinguish the gleam of the eyes under the trees.

Then, glancing down, I saw a face near my hand. The black bones

reclined at full length with one shoulder against the tree, and slowly

the eyelids rose and the sunken eyes looked up at me, enormous and

vacant, a kind of blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs, which

died out slowly. The man seemed young—almost a boy—but you know with

them it’s hard to tell. I found nothing else to do but to offer him one

of my good Swede’s ship’s biscuits I had in my pocket. The fingers

closed slowly on it and held—there was no other movement and no other

glance. He had tied a bit of white worsted round his neck—Why? Where

did he get it? Was it a badge—an ornament—a charm—a propitiatory act?

Was there any idea at all connected with it? It looked startling round

his black neck, this bit of white thread from beyond the seas.

“Near the same tree two more bundles of acute angles sat with their

legs drawn up. One, with his chin propped on his knees, stared at

nothing, in an intolerable and appalling manner: his brother phantom

rested its forehead, as if overcome with a great weariness; and all

about others were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, as in

some picture of a massacre or a pestilence. While I stood

horror-struck, one of these creatures rose to his hands and knees, and

went off on all-fours towards the river to drink. He lapped out of his

hand, then sat up in the sunlight, crossing his shins in front of him,

and after a time let his woolly head fall on his breastbone.

“I didn’t want any more loitering in the shade, and I made haste

towards the station. When near the buildings I met a white man, in such

an unexpected elegance of get-up that in the first moment I took him

for a sort of vision. I saw a high starched collar, white cuffs, a

light alpaca jacket, snowy trousers, a clean necktie, and varnished

boots. No hat. Hair parted, brushed, oiled, under a green-lined parasol

held in a big white hand. He was amazing, and had a penholder behind

his ear.

“I shook hands with this miracle, and I learned he was the Company’s

chief accountant, and that all the book-keeping was done at this

station. He had come out for a moment, he said, ‘to get a breath of

fresh air. The expression sounded wonderfully odd, with its suggestion

of sedentary desk-life. I wouldn’t have mentioned the fellow to you at

all, only it was from his lips that I first heard the name of the man

who is so indissolubly connected with the memories of that time.

Moreover, I respected the fellow. Yes; I respected his collars, his

vast cuffs, his brushed hair. His appearance was certainly that of a

hairdresser’s dummy; but in the great demoralization of the land he

kept up his appearance. That’s backbone. His starched collars and

got-up shirt-fronts were achievements of character. He had been out

nearly three years; and, later, I could not help asking him how he

managed to sport such linen. He had just the faintest blush, and said

modestly, ‘I’ve been teaching one of the native women about the

station. It was difficult. She had a distaste for the work.’ Thus this

man had verily accomplished something. And he was devoted to his books,

which were in apple-pie order.

“Everything else in the station was in a muddle—heads, things,

buildings. Strings of dusty niggers with splay feet arrived and

departed; a stream of manufactured goods, rubbishy cottons, beads, and

brass-wire 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 invalid agent from

upcountry) was put in there, he exhibited a gentle annoyance. ‘The

groans of this sick person,’ he said, ‘distract my attention. And

without that it is extremely difficult to guard against clerical errors

in this climate.’

“One day he remarked, without lifting his head, ‘In the interior you

will no doubt meet Mr. Kurtz.’ On my asking who Mr. Kurtz was, he said

he was a first-class agent; and seeing my disappointment at this

information, he added slowly, laying down his pen, ‘He is a very

remarkable person.’ Further questions elicited from him that Mr. Kurtz

was at present in charge of a trading-post, a very important one, in

the true ivory-country, at ‘the very bottom of there. Sends in as much

ivory as all the others put together...’ He began to write again. The

sick man was too ill to groan. The flies buzzed in a great peace.

“Suddenly there was a growing murmur of voices and a great tramping of

feet. A caravan had come in. A violent babble of uncouth sounds burst

out on the other side of the planks. All the carriers were speaking

together, and in the midst of the uproar the lamentable voice of the

chief agent was heard ‘giving it up’ tearfully for the twentieth time

that day.... He rose slowly. ‘What a frightful row,’ he said. He

crossed the room gently to look at the sick man, and returning, said to

me, ‘He does not hear.’ ‘What! Dead?’ I asked, startled. ‘No, not yet,’

he answered, with great composure. Then, alluding with a toss of the

head to the tumult in the station-yard, ‘When one has got to make

correct entries, one comes to hate those savages—hate them to the

death.’ He remained thoughtful for a moment. ‘When you see Mr. Kurtz’

he went on, ‘tell him from me that everything here’—he glanced at the

deck—‘is very satisfactory. I don’t like to write to him—with those

messengers of ours you never know who may get hold of your letter—at

that Central Station.’ He stared at me for a moment with his mild,

bulging eyes. ‘Oh, he will go far, very far,’ he began again. ‘He will

be a somebody in the Administration before long. They, above—the

Council in Europe, you know—mean him to be.’

“He turned to his work. The noise outside had ceased, and presently in

going out I stopped at the door. In the steady buzz of flies the

homeward-bound agent was lying finished and insensible; the other, bent

over his books, was making correct entries of perfectly correct

transactions; and fifty feet below the doorstep I could see the still

tree-tops of the grove of death.

“Next day I left that station at last, with a caravan of sixty men, for

a two-hundred-mile tramp.