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 icthyosaurus had been taking a bath of glitter in the great
river. ‘After all,’ said the boiler-maker in a reasonable tone, ‘why
shouldn’t we get the rivets?’ Why not, indeed! I did not know of any
reason why we shouldn’t. ‘They’ll come in three weeks,’ I said
confidently.
“But they didn’t. Instead of rivets there came an invasion, an
infliction, a visitation. It came in sections during the next three
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 donkey; a lot of tents, camp-stools, tin boxes,
white cases, brown bales would be shot down in the courtyard, and the
air of mystery would deepen a little over the muddle of the station.
Five such instalments came, with their absurd air of disorderly 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 neighbourhood, and his
eyes had a look of sleepy cunning. He carried his fat paunch with
ostentation on his short legs, and during the time his gang infested
the station spoke to no one but his nephew. You could see these two
roaming about all day long with their heads close together in an
everlasting confab.
“I had given up worrying myself about the rivets. One’s capacity for
that kind of folly is more limited than you would suppose. I said
Hang!—and let things slide. I had plenty of time for meditation, and
now and then I would give some thought to Kurtz. I wasn’t very
interested in him. No. Still, I was curious to see whether this man,
who had come out equipped with moral ideas of some sort, would climb to
the top after all and how he would set about his work when there.”
II
“One evening as I was lying flat on the deck of my steamboat, I heard
voices approaching—and there were the nephew and the uncle strolling
along the bank. I laid my head on my arm again, and had nearly lost
myself in a doze, when somebody said in my ear, as it were: ‘I am as
harmless as a little child, but I don’t like to be dictated to. Am I
the manager—or am I not? I was ordered to send him there. It’s
incredible.’ ... I became aware that the two were standing on the shore
alongside the forepart of the steamboat, just below my head. I did not
move; it did not occur to me to move: I was sleepy. ‘It _is_
unpleasant,’ grunted the uncle. ‘He has asked the Administration to be
sent there,’ said the other, ‘with the idea of showing what he could
do; and I was instructed accordingly. Look at the influence that man
must have. Is it not frightful?’ They both agreed it was frightful,
then made several bizarre remarks: ‘Make rain and fine weather—one
man—the Council—by the nose’—bits of absurd sentences that got the
better of my drowsiness, so that I had pretty near the whole of my wits
about me when the uncle said, ‘The climate may do away with this
difficulty for you. Is he alone there?’ ‘Yes,’ answered the manager;
‘he sent his assistant down the river with a note to me in these terms:
“Clear this poor devil out of the country, and don’t bother sending
more of that sort. I had rather be alone than have the kind of men you
can dispose of with me.” It was more than a year ago. Can you imagine
such impudence!’ ‘Anything since then?’ asked the other hoarsely.
‘Ivory,’ jerked the nephew; ‘lots of it—prime sort—lots—most annoying,
from him.’ ‘And with that?’ questioned the heavy rumble. ‘Invoice,’ was
the reply fired out, so to speak. Then silence. They had been talking
about Kurtz.
“I was broad awake by this time, but, lying perfectly at ease, remained
still, having no inducement to change my position. ‘How did that ivory
come all this way?’ growled the elder man, who seemed very vexed. The
other explained that it had come with a fleet of canoes in charge of an
English half-caste clerk Kurtz had with him; that Kurtz had apparently
intended to return himself, the station being by that time bare of
goods and stores, but after coming three hundred miles, had suddenly
decided to go back, which he started to do alone in a small dugout with
four paddlers, leaving the half-caste to continue down the river with
the ivory. The two fellows there seemed astounded at anybody attempting
such a thing. They were at a loss for an adequate motive. As to me, I
seemed to see Kurtz for the first time. It was a distinct glimpse: the
dugout, four paddling savages, and the lone white man turning his back
suddenly on the headquarters, on relief, on thoughts of home—perhaps;
setting his face towards the depths of the wilderness, towards his
empty and desolate station. I did not know the motive. Perhaps he was
just simply a fine fellow who stuck to his work for its own sake. His
name, you understand, had not been pronounced once. He was ‘that man.’
The half-caste, who, as far as I could see, had conducted a difficult
trip with great prudence and pluck, was invariably alluded to as ‘that
scoundrel.’ The ‘scoundrel’ had reported that the ‘man’ had been very
ill—had recovered imperfectly.... The two below me moved away then a
few paces, and strolled back and forth at some little distance. I
heard: ‘Military post—doctor—two hundred miles—quite alone
now—unavoidable delays—nine months—no news—strange rumours.’ They
approached again, just as the manager was saying, ‘No one, as far as I
know, unless a species of wandering trader—a pestilential fellow,
snapping ivory from the natives.’ Who was it they were talking about
now? I gathered in snatches that this was some man supposed to be in
Kurtz’s district, and of whom the manager did not approve. ‘We will not
be free from unfair competition till one of these fellows is hanged for
an example,’ he said. ‘Certainly,’ grunted the other; ‘get him hanged!
Why not? Anything—anything can be done in this country. That’s what I
say; nobody here, you understand, _here_, can endanger your position.
And why? You stand the climate—you outlast them all. The danger is in
Europe; but there before I left I took care to—’ They moved off and
whispered, then their voices rose again. ‘The extraordinary series of
delays is not my fault. I did my best.’ The fat man sighed. ‘Very sad.’
‘And the pestiferous absurdity of his talk,’ continued the other; ‘he
bothered me enough when he was here. “Each station should be like a
beacon on the road towards better things, a centre for trade of course,
but also for humanizing, improving, instructing.” Conceive you—that
ass! And he wants to be manager! No, it’s—’ Here he got choked by
excessive indignation, and I lifted my head the least bit. I was
surprised to see how near they were—right under me. I could have spat
upon their hats. They were looking on the ground, absorbed in thought.
The manager was switching his leg with a slender twig: his sagacious
relative lifted his head. ‘You have been well since you came out this
time?’ he asked. The other gave a start. ‘Who? I? Oh! Like a charm—like
a charm. But the rest—oh, my goodness! All sick. They die so quick,
too, that I haven’t the time to send them out of the country—it’s
incredible!’ ‘Hm’m. Just so,’ grunted the uncle. ‘Ah! my boy, trust to
this—I say, trust to this.’ I saw him extend his short flipper of an
arm for a gesture that took in the forest, the creek, the mud, the
river—seemed to beckon with a dishonouring flourish before the sunlit
face of the land a treacherous appeal to the lurking death, to the
hidden evil, to the profound darkness of its heart. It was so startling
that I leaped to my feet and looked back at the edge of the forest, as
though I had expected an answer of some sort to that black display of
confidence. You know the foolish notions that come to one sometimes.
The high stillness confronted these two figures with its ominous
patience, waiting for the passing away of a fantastic invasion.
“They swore aloud together—out of sheer fright, I believe—then
pretending not to know anything of my existence, turned back to the
station. The sun was low; and leaning forward side by side, they seemed
to be tugging painfully uphill their two ridiculous shadows of unequal
length, that trailed behind them slowly over the tall grass without
bending a single blade.
“In a few days the Eldorado Expedition went into the patient
wilderness, that closed upon it as the sea closes over a diver. Long
afterwards the news came that all the donkeys were dead. I know nothing
as to the fate of the less valuable animals. They, no doubt, like the
rest of us, found what they deserved. I did not inquire. I was then
rather excited at the prospect of meeting Kurtz very soon. When I say
very soon I mean it comparatively. It was just two months from the day
we left the creek when we came to the bank below Kurtz’s station.
“Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings
of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees
were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest.
The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the
brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on,
deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery
sand-banks hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side. The
broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands; you lost your
way on that river as you would in a desert, and butted all day long
against shoals, trying to find the channel, till you thought yourself
bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known
once—somewhere—far away—in another existence perhaps. There were
moments when one’s past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you
have not a moment to spare for yourself; but it came in the shape of an
unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the
overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and
silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a
peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an
inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect. I got
used to it afterwards; I did not see it any more; I had no time. I had
to keep guessing at the channel; I had to discern, mostly by
inspiration, the signs of hidden banks; I watched for sunken stones; I
was learning to clap my teeth smartly before my heart flew out, when I
shaved by a fluke some infernal sly old snag that would have ripped the
life out of the tin-pot steamboat and drowned all the pilgrims; I had
to keep a lookout for the signs of dead wood we could cut up in the
night for next day’s steaming. When you have to attend to things of
that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality—the
reality, I tell you—fades. The inner truth is hidden—luckily, luckily.
But I felt it all the same; I felt often its mysterious stillness
watching me at my monkey tricks, just as it watches you fellows
performing on your respective tight-ropes for—what is it? half-a-crown
a tumble—”
“Try to be civil, Marlow,” growled a voice, and I knew there was at
least one listener awake besides myself.
“I beg your pardon. I forgot the heartache which makes up the rest of
the price. And indeed what does the price matter, if the trick be well
done? You do your tricks very well. And I didn’t do badly either, since
I managed not to sink that steamboat on my first trip. It’s a wonder to
me yet. Imagine a blindfolded man set to drive a van over a bad road. I
sweated and shivered over that business considerably, I can tell you.
After all, for a seaman, to scrape the bottom of the thing that’s
supposed to float all the time under his care is the unpardonable sin.
No one may know of it, but you never forget the thump—eh? A blow on the
very heart. You remember it, you dream of it, you wake up at night and
think of it—years after—and go hot and cold all over. I don’t pretend
to say that steamboat floated all the time. More than once she had to
wade for a bit, with twenty cannibals splashing around and pushing. We
had enlisted some of these chaps on the way for a crew. Fine
fellows—cannibals—in their place. They were men one could work with,
and I am grateful to them. And, after all, they did not eat each other
before my face: they had brought along a provision of hippo-meat which
went rotten, and made the mystery of the wilderness stink in my
nostrils. Phoo! I can sniff it now. I had the manager on board and
three or four pilgrims with their staves—all complete. Sometimes we
came upon a station close by the bank, clinging to the skirts of the
unknown, and the white men rushing out of a tumble-down hovel, with
great gestures of joy and surprise and welcome, seemed very strange—had
the appearance of being held there captive by a spell. The word ivory
would ring in the air for a while—and on we went again into the
silence, along empty reaches, round the still bends, between the high
walls of our winding way, reverberating in hollow claps the ponderous
beat of the stern-wheel. Trees, trees, millions of trees, massive,
immense, running up high; and at their foot, hugging the bank against
the stream, crept the little begrimed steamboat, like a sluggish beetle
crawling on the floor of a lofty portico. It made you feel very small,
very lost, and yet it was not altogether depressing, that feeling.
After all, if you were small, the grimy beetle crawled on—which was
just what you wanted it to do. Where the pilgrims imagined it crawled
to I don’t know. To some place where they expected to get something. I
bet! For me it crawled towards Kurtz—exclusively; but when the
steam-pipes started leaking we crawled very slow. The reaches opened
before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely
across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper
and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there. At
night sometimes the roll of drums behind the curtain of trees would run
up the river and remain sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air
high over our heads, till the first break of day. Whether it meant war,
peace, or prayer we could not tell. The dawns were heralded by the
descent of a chill stillness; the wood-cutters slept, their fires
burned low; the snapping of a twig would make you start. We were
wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of
an unknown planet. We could have fancied ourselves the first of men
taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost
of profound anguish and of excessive toil. But suddenly, as we
struggled round a bend, there would be a glimpse of rush walls, of
peaked grass-roofs, a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of
hands clapping, of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling,
under the droop of heavy and motionless foliage. The steamer toiled
along slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy. The
prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us—who could
tell? We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; we
glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men
would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. We could not
understand because we were too far and could not remember because we
were travelling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are
gone, leaving hardly a sign—and no memories.
“The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the
shackled form of a conquered monster, but there—there you could look at
a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were—No, they
were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it—this
suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They
howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled
you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought of
your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it
was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself
that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the
terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a
meaning in it which you—you so remote from the night of first
ages—could comprehend. And why not? The mind of man is capable of
anything—because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the
future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour,
rage—who can tell?—but truth—truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let
the fool gape and shudder—the man knows, and can look on without a
wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore.
He must meet that truth with his own true stuff—with his own inborn
strength. Principles won’t do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags—rags
that would fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate
belief. An appeal to me in this fiendish row—is there? Very well; I
hear; I admit, but I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is
the speech that cannot be silenced. Of course, a fool, what with sheer
fright and fine sentiments, is always safe. Who’s that grunting? You
wonder I didn’t go ashore for a howl and a dance? Well, no—I didn’t.
Fine sentiments, you say? Fine sentiments, be hanged! I had no time. I
had to mess about with white-lead and strips of woolen blanket helping
to put bandages on those leaky steam-pipes—I tell you. I had to watch
the steering, and circumvent those snags, and get the tin-pot along by
hook or by crook. There was surface-truth enough in these things to
save a wiser man. And between whiles I had to look after the savage who
was fireman. He was an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical
boiler. He was there below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as
edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat,
walking on his hind-legs. A few months of training had done for that
really fine chap. He squinted at the steam-gauge and at the water-gauge
with an evident effort of intrepidity—and he had filed teeth, too, the
poor devil, and the wool of his pate shaved into queer patterns, and
three ornamental scars on each of his cheeks. He ought to have been
clapping his hands and stamping his feet on the bank, instead of which
he was hard at work, a thrall to strange witchcraft, full of improving
knowledge. He was useful because he had been instructed; and what he
knew was this—that should the water in that transparent thing
disappear, the evil spirit inside the boiler would get angry through
the greatness of his thirst, and take a terrible vengeance. So he
sweated and fired up and watched the glass fearfully (with an impromptu
charm, made of rags, tied to his arm, and a piece of polished bone, as
big as a watch, stuck flatways through his lower lip), while the wooded
banks slipped past us slowly, the short noise was left behind, the
interminable miles of silence—and we crept on, towards Kurtz. But the
snags were thick, the water was treacherous and shallow, the boiler
seemed indeed to have a sulky devil in it, and thus neither that
fireman nor I had any time to peer into our creepy thoughts.