an inclined and melancholy pole, with the unrecognizable tatters of
what had been a flag of some sort flying from it, and a neatly stacked
wood-pile. This was unexpected. We came to the bank, and on the stack
of firewood found a flat piece of board with some faded pencil-writing
on it. When deciphered it said: ‘Wood for you. Hurry up. Approach
cautiously.’ There was a signature, but it was illegible—not Kurtz—a
much longer word. ‘Hurry up.’ Where? Up the river? ‘Approach
cautiously.’ We had not done so. But the warning could not have been
meant for the place where it could be only found after approach.
Something was wrong above. But what—and how much? That was the
question. We commented adversely upon the imbecility of that
telegraphic style. The bush around said nothing, and would not let us
look very far, either. A torn curtain of red twill hung in the doorway
of the hut, and flapped sadly in our faces. The dwelling was
dismantled; but we could see a white man had lived there not very long
ago. There remained a rude table—a plank on two posts; a heap of
rubbish reposed in a dark corner, and by the door I picked up a book.
It had lost its covers, and the pages had been thumbed into a state of
extremely dirty softness; but the back had been lovingly stitched
afresh with white cotton thread, which looked clean yet. It was an
extraordinary find. Its title was, _An Inquiry into some Points of
Seamanship_, by a man Towser, Towson—some such name—Master in his
Majesty’s Navy. The matter looked dreary reading enough, with
illustrative diagrams and repulsive tables of figures, and the copy was
sixty years old. I handled this amazing antiquity with the greatest
possible tenderness, lest it should dissolve in my hands. Within,
Towson or Towser was inquiring earnestly into the breaking strain of
ships’ chains and tackle, and other such matters. Not a very
enthralling book; but at the first glance you could see there a
singleness of intention, an honest concern for the right way of going
to work, which made these humble pages, thought out so many years ago,
luminous with another than a professional light. The simple old sailor,
with his talk of chains and purchases, made me forget the jungle and
the pilgrims in a delicious sensation of having come upon something
unmistakably real. Such a book being there was wonderful enough; but
still more astounding were the notes pencilled in the margin, and
plainly referring to the text. I couldn’t believe my eyes! They were in
cipher! Yes, it looked like cipher. Fancy a man lugging with him a book
of that description into this nowhere and studying it—and making
notes—in cipher at that! It was an extravagant mystery.
“I had been dimly aware for some time of a worrying noise, and when I
lifted my eyes I saw the wood-pile was gone, and the manager, aided by
all the pilgrims, was shouting at me from the riverside. I slipped the
book into my pocket. I assure you to leave off reading was like tearing
myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship.
“I started the lame engine ahead. ‘It must be this miserable
trader—this intruder,’ exclaimed the manager, looking back malevolently
at the place we had left. ‘He must be English,’ I said. ‘It will not
save him from getting into trouble if he is not careful,’ muttered the
manager darkly. I observed with assumed innocence that no man was safe
from trouble in this world.
“The current was more rapid now, the steamer seemed at her last gasp,
the stern-wheel flopped languidly, and I caught myself listening on
tiptoe for the next beat of the boat, for in sober truth I expected the
wretched thing to give up every moment. It was like watching the last
flickers of a life. But still we crawled. Sometimes I would pick out a
tree a little way ahead to measure our progress towards Kurtz by, but I
lost it invariably before we got abreast. To keep the eyes so long on
one thing was too much for human patience. The manager displayed a
beautiful resignation. I fretted and fumed and took to arguing with
myself whether or no I would talk openly with Kurtz; but before I could
come to any conclusion it occurred to me that my speech or my silence,
indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility. What did it matter
what any one knew or ignored? What did it matter who was manager? One
gets sometimes such a flash of insight. The essentials of this affair
lay deep under the surface, beyond my reach, and beyond my power of
meddling.
“Towards the evening of the second day we judged ourselves about eight
miles from Kurtz’s station. I wanted to push on; but the manager looked
grave, and told me the navigation up there was so dangerous that it
would be advisable, the sun being very low already, to wait where we
were till next morning. Moreover, he pointed out that if the warning to
approach cautiously were to be followed, we must approach in
daylight—not at dusk or in the dark. This was sensible enough. Eight
miles meant nearly three hours’ steaming for us, and I could also see
suspicious ripples at the upper end of the reach. Nevertheless, I was
annoyed beyond expression at the delay, and most unreasonably, too,
since one night more could not matter much after so many months. As we
had plenty of wood, and caution was the word, I brought up in the
middle of the stream. The reach was narrow, straight, with high sides
like a railway cutting. The dusk came gliding into it long before the
sun had set. The current ran smooth and swift, but a dumb immobility
sat on the banks. The living trees, lashed together by the creepers and
every living bush of the undergrowth, might have been changed into
stone, even to the slenderest twig, to the lightest leaf. It was not
sleep—it seemed unnatural, like a state of trance. Not the faintest
sound of any kind could be heard. You looked on amazed, and began to
suspect yourself of being deaf—then the night came suddenly, and struck
you blind as well. About three in the morning some large fish leaped,
and the loud splash made me jump as though a gun had been fired. When
the sun rose there was a white fog, very warm and clammy, and more
blinding than the night. It did not shift or drive; it was just there,
standing all round you like something solid. At eight or nine, perhaps,
it lifted as a shutter lifts. We had a glimpse of the towering
multitude of trees, of the immense matted jungle, with the blazing
little ball of the sun hanging over it—all perfectly still—and then the
white shutter came down again, smoothly, as if sliding in greased
grooves. I ordered the chain, which we had begun to heave in, to be
paid out again. Before it stopped running with a muffled rattle, a cry,
a very loud cry, as of infinite desolation, soared slowly in the opaque
air. It ceased. A complaining clamour, modulated in savage discords,
filled our ears. The sheer unexpectedness of it made my hair stir under
my cap. I don’t know how it struck the others: to me it seemed as
though the mist itself had screamed, so suddenly, and apparently from
all sides at once, did this tumultuous and mournful uproar arise. It
culminated in a hurried outbreak of almost intolerably excessive
shrieking, which stopped short, leaving us stiffened in a variety of
silly attitudes, and obstinately listening to the nearly as appalling
and excessive silence. ‘Good God! What is the meaning—’ stammered at my
elbow one of the pilgrims—a little fat man, with sandy hair and red
whiskers, who wore sidespring boots, and pink pyjamas tucked into his
socks. Two others remained open-mouthed a whole minute, then dashed
into the little cabin, to rush out incontinently and stand darting
scared glances, with Winchesters at ‘ready’ in their hands. What we
could see was just the steamer we were on, her outlines blurred as
though she had been on the point of dissolving, and a misty strip of
water, perhaps two feet broad, around her—and that was all. The rest of
the world was nowhere, as far as our eyes and ears were concerned. Just
nowhere. Gone, disappeared; swept off without leaving a whisper or a
shadow behind.
“I went forward, and ordered the chain to be hauled in short, so as to
be ready to trip the anchor and move the steamboat at once if
necessary. ‘Will they attack?’ whispered an awed voice. ‘We will be all
butchered in this fog,’ murmured another. The faces twitched with the
strain, the hands trembled slightly, the eyes forgot to wink. It was
very curious to see the contrast of expressions of the white men and of
the black fellows of our crew, who were as much strangers to that part
of the river as we, though their homes were only eight hundred miles
away. The whites, of course greatly discomposed, had besides a curious
look of being painfully shocked by such an outrageous row. The others
had an alert, naturally interested expression; but their faces were
essentially quiet, even those of the one or two who grinned as they
hauled at the chain. Several exchanged short, grunting phrases, which
seemed to settle the matter to their satisfaction. Their headman, a
young, broad-chested black, severely draped in dark-blue fringed
cloths, with fierce nostrils and his hair all done up artfully in oily
ringlets, stood near me. ‘Aha!’ I said, just for good fellowship’s
sake. ‘Catch ’im,’ he snapped, with a bloodshot widening of his eyes
and a flash of sharp teeth—‘catch ’im. Give ’im to us.’ ‘To you, eh?’ I
asked; ‘what would you do with them?’ ‘Eat ’im!’ he said curtly, and,
leaning his elbow on the rail, looked out into the fog in a dignified
and profoundly pensive attitude. I would no doubt have been properly
horrified, had it not occurred to me that he and his chaps must be very
hungry: that they must have been growing increasingly hungry for at
least this month past. They had been engaged for six months (I don’t
think a single one of them had any clear idea of time, as we at the end
of countless ages have. They still belonged to the beginnings of
time—had no inherited experience to teach them as it were), and of
course, as long as there was a piece of paper written over in
accordance with some farcical law or other made down the river, it
didn’t enter anybody’s head to trouble how they would live. Certainly
they had brought with them some rotten hippo-meat, which couldn’t have
lasted very long, anyway, even if the pilgrims hadn’t, in the midst of
a shocking hullabaloo, thrown a considerable quantity of it overboard.
It looked like a high-handed proceeding; but it was really a case of
legitimate self-defence. You can’t breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping,
and eating, and at the same time keep your precarious grip on
existence. Besides that, they had given them every week three pieces of
brass wire, each about nine inches long; and the theory was they were
to buy their provisions with that currency in riverside villages. You
can see how _that_ worked. There were either no villages, or the people
were hostile, or the director, who like the rest of us fed out of tins,
with an occasional old he-goat thrown in, didn’t want to stop the
steamer for some more or less recondite reason. So, unless they
swallowed the wire itself, or made loops of it to snare the fishes
with, I don’t see what good their extravagant salary could be to them.
I must say it was paid with a regularity worthy of a large and
honourable trading company. For the rest, the only thing to eat—though
it didn’t look eatable in the least—I saw in their possession was a few
lumps of some stuff like half-cooked dough, of a dirty lavender colour,
they kept wrapped in leaves, and now and then swallowed a piece of, but
so small that it seemed done more for the looks of the thing than for
any serious purpose of sustenance. Why in the name of all the gnawing
devils of hunger they didn’t go for us—they were thirty to five—and
have a good tuck-in for once, amazes me now when I think of it. They
were big powerful men, with not much capacity to weigh the
consequences, with courage, with strength, even yet, though their skins
were no longer glossy and their muscles no longer hard. And I saw that
something restraining, one of those human secrets that baffle
probability, had come into play there. I looked at them with a swift
quickening of interest—not because it occurred to me I might be eaten
by them before very long, though I own to you that just then I
perceived—in a new light, as it were—how unwholesome the pilgrims
looked, and I hoped, yes, I positively hoped, that my aspect was not
so—what shall I say?—so—unappetizing: a touch of fantastic vanity which
fitted well with the dream-sensation that pervaded all my days at that
time. Perhaps I had a little fever, too. One can’t live with one’s
finger everlastingly on one’s pulse. I had often ‘a little fever,’ or a
little touch of other things—the playful paw-strokes of the wilderness,
the preliminary trifling before the more serious onslaught which came
in due course. Yes; I looked at them as you would on any human being,
with a curiosity of their impulses, motives, capacities, weaknesses,
when brought to the test of an inexorable physical necessity.
Restraint! What possible restraint? Was it superstition, disgust,
patience, fear—or some kind of primitive honour? No fear can stand up
to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist
where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call
principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze. Don’t you know the
devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating torment, its black
thoughts, its sombre and brooding ferocity? Well, I do. It takes a man
all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly. It’s really easier to
face bereavement, dishonour, and the perdition of one’s soul—than this
kind of prolonged hunger. Sad, but true. And these chaps, too, had no
earthly reason for any kind of scruple. Restraint! I would just as soon
have expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the corpses of a
battlefield. But there was the fact facing me—the fact dazzling, to be
seen, like the foam on the depths of the sea, like a ripple on an
unfathomable enigma, a mystery greater—when I thought of it—than the
curious, inexplicable note of desperate grief in this savage clamour
that had swept by us on the river-bank, behind the blind whiteness of
the fog.
“Two pilgrims were quarrelling in hurried whispers as to which bank.
‘Left.’ ‘no, no; how can you? Right, right, of course.’ ‘It is very
serious,’ said the manager’s voice behind me; ‘I would be desolated if
anything should happen to Mr. Kurtz before we came up.’ I looked at
him, and had not the slightest doubt he was sincere. He was just the
kind of man who would wish to preserve appearances. That was his
restraint. But when he muttered something about going on at once, I did
not even take the trouble to answer him. I knew, and he knew, that it
was impossible. Were we to let go our hold of the bottom, we would be
absolutely in the air—in space. We wouldn’t be able to tell where we
were going to—whether up or down stream, or across—till we fetched
against one bank or the other—and then we wouldn’t know at first which
it was. Of course I made no move. I had no mind for a smash-up. You
couldn’t imagine a more deadly place for a shipwreck. Whether we
drowned at once or not, we were sure to perish speedily in one way or
another. ‘I authorize you to take all the risks,’ he said, after a
short silence. ‘I refuse to take any,’ I said shortly; which was just
the answer he expected, though its tone might have surprised him.
‘Well, I must defer to your judgment. You are captain,’ he said with
marked civility. I turned my shoulder to him in sign of my
appreciation, and looked into the fog. How long would it last? It was
the most hopeless lookout. The approach to this Kurtz grubbing for
ivory in the wretched bush was beset by as many dangers as though he
had been an enchanted princess sleeping in a fabulous castle. ‘Will
they attack, do you think?’ asked the manager, in a confidential tone.
“I did not think they would attack, for several obvious reasons. The
thick fog was one. If they left the bank in their canoes they would get
lost in it, as we would be if we attempted to move. Still, I had also
judged the jungle of both banks quite impenetrable—and yet eyes were in
it, eyes that had seen us. The riverside bushes were certainly very
thick; but the undergrowth behind was evidently penetrable. However,
during the short lift I had seen no canoes anywhere in the
reach—certainly not abreast of the steamer. But what made the idea of
attack inconceivable to me was the nature of the noise—of the cries we
had heard. They had not the fierce character boding immediate hostile
intention. Unexpected, wild, and violent as they had been, they had
given me an irresistible impression of sorrow. The glimpse of the
steamboat had for some reason filled those savages with unrestrained
grief. The danger, if any, I expounded, was from our proximity to a
great human passion let loose. Even extreme grief may ultimately vent
itself in violence—but more generally takes the form of apathy....
“You should have seen the pilgrims stare! They had no heart to grin, or
even to revile me: but I believe they thought me gone mad—with fright,
maybe. I delivered a regular lecture. My dear boys, it was no good
bothering. Keep a lookout? Well, you may guess I watched the fog for
the signs of lifting as a cat watches a mouse; but for anything else
our eyes were of no more use to us than if we had been buried miles
deep in a heap of cotton-wool. It felt like it, too—choking, warm,
stifling. Besides, all I said, though it sounded extravagant, was
absolutely true to fact. What we afterwards alluded to as an attack was
really an attempt at repulse. The action was very far from being
aggressive—it was not even defensive, in the usual sense: it was
undertaken under the stress of desperation, and in its essence was
purely protective.
“It developed itself, I should say, two hours after the fog lifted, and
its commencement was at a spot, roughly speaking, about a mile and a
half below Kurtz’s station. We had just floundered and flopped round a
bend, when I saw an islet, a mere grassy hummock of bright green, in
the middle of the stream. It was the only thing of the kind; but as we
opened the reach more, I perceived it was the head of a long sand-bank,
or rather of a chain of shallow patches stretching down the middle of
the river. They were discoloured, just awash, and the whole lot was
seen just under the water, exactly as a man’s backbone is seen running
down the middle of his back under the skin. Now, as far as I did see, I
could go to the right or to the left of this. I didn’t know either
channel, of course. The banks looked pretty well alike, the depth
appeared the same; but as I had been informed the station was on the
west side, I naturally headed for the western passage.
“No sooner had we fairly entered it than I became aware it was much
narrower than I had supposed. To the left of us there was the long
uninterrupted shoal, and to the right a high, steep bank heavily
overgrown with bushes. Above the bush the trees stood in serried ranks.
The twigs overhung the current thickly, and from distance to distance a
large limb of some tree projected rigidly over the stream. It was then
well on in the afternoon, the face of the forest was gloomy, and a
broad strip of shadow had already fallen on the water. In this shadow
we steamed up—very slowly, as you may imagine. I sheered her well
inshore—the water being deepest near the bank, as the sounding-pole
informed me.
“One of my hungry and forbearing friends was sounding in the bows just
below me. This steamboat was exactly like a decked scow. On the deck,
there were two little teakwood houses, with doors and windows. The
boiler was in the fore-end, and the machinery right astern. Over the
whole there was a light roof, supported on stanchions. The funnel
projected through that roof, and in front of the funnel a small cabin
built of light planks served for a pilot-house. It contained a couch,
two camp-stools, a loaded Martini-Henry leaning in one corner, a tiny
table, and the steering-wheel. It had a wide door in front and a broad
shutter at each side. All these were always thrown open, of course. I
spent my days perched up there on the extreme fore-end of that roof,
before the door. At night I slept, or tried to, on the couch. An
athletic black belonging to some coast tribe and educated by my poor
predecessor, was the helmsman. He sported a pair of brass earrings,
wore a blue cloth wrapper from the waist to the ankles, and thought all
the world of himself. He was the most unstable kind of fool I had ever
seen. He steered with no end of a swagger while you were by; but if he
lost sight of you, he became instantly the prey of an abject funk, and
would let that cripple of a steamboat get the upper hand of him in a
minute.
“I was looking down at the sounding-pole, and feeling much annoyed to
see at each try a little more of it stick out of that river, when I saw
my poleman give up on the business suddenly, and stretch himself flat
on the deck, without even taking the trouble to haul his pole in. He
kept hold on it though, and it trailed in the water. At the same time
the fireman, whom I could also see below me, sat down abruptly before
his furnace and ducked his head. I was amazed. Then I had to look at
the river mighty quick, because there was a snag in the fairway.
Sticks, little sticks, were flying about—thick: they were whizzing
before my nose, dropping below me, striking behind me against my
pilot-house. All this time the river, the shore, the woods, were very
quiet—perfectly quiet. I could only hear the heavy splashing thump of
the stern-wheel and the patter of these things. We cleared the snag
clumsily. Arrows, by Jove! We were being shot at! I stepped in quickly
to close the shutter on the landside. That fool-helmsman, his hands on
the spokes, was lifting his knees high, stamping his feet, champing his
mouth, like a reined-in horse. Confound him! And we were staggering
within ten feet of the bank. I had to lean right out to swing the heavy
shutter, and I saw a face amongst the leaves on the level with my own,
looking at me very fierce and steady; and then suddenly, as though a
veil had been removed from my eyes, I made out, deep in the tangled
gloom, naked breasts, arms, legs, glaring eyes—the bush was swarming
with human limbs in movement, glistening of bronze colour. The twigs
shook, swayed, and rustled, the arrows flew out of them, and then the
shutter came to. ‘Steer her straight,’ I said to the helmsman. He held
his head rigid, face forward; but his eyes rolled, he kept on lifting
and setting down his feet gently, his mouth foamed a little. ‘Keep
quiet!’ I said in a fury. I might just as well have ordered a tree not
to sway in the wind. I darted out. Below me there was a great scuffle
of feet on the iron deck; confused exclamations; a voice screamed, ‘Can
you turn back?’ I caught sight of a V-shaped ripple on the water ahead.
What? Another snag! A fusillade burst out under my feet. The pilgrims
had opened with their Winchesters, and were simply squirting lead into
that bush. A deuce of a lot of smoke came up and drove slowly forward.
I swore at it. Now I couldn’t see the ripple or the snag either. I
stood in the doorway, peering, and the arrows came in swarms. They
might have been poisoned, but they looked as though they wouldn’t kill
a cat. The bush began to howl. Our wood-cutters raised a warlike whoop;
the report of a rifle just at my back deafened me. I glanced over my
shoulder, and the pilot-house was yet full of noise and smoke when I
made a dash at the wheel. The fool-nigger had dropped everything, to
throw the shutter open and let off that Martini-Henry. He stood before
the wide opening, glaring, and I yelled at him to come back, while I
straightened the sudden twist out of that steamboat. There was no room
to turn even if I had wanted to, the snag was somewhere very near ahead
in that confounded smoke, there was no time to lose, so I just crowded
her into the bank—right into the bank, where I knew the water was deep.