and flying leaves. The fusillade below stopped short, as I had foreseen
it would when the squirts got empty. I threw my head back to a glinting
whizz that traversed the pilot-house, in at one shutter-hole and out at
the other. Looking past that mad helmsman, who was shaking the empty
rifle and yelling at the shore, I saw vague forms of men running bent
double, leaping, gliding, distinct, incomplete, evanescent. Something
big appeared in the air before the shutter, the rifle went overboard,
and the man stepped back swiftly, looked at me over his shoulder in an
extraordinary, profound, familiar manner, and fell upon my feet. The
side of his head hit the wheel twice, and the end of what appeared a
long cane clattered round and knocked over a little camp-stool. It
looked as though after wrenching that thing from somebody ashore he had
lost his balance in the effort. The thin smoke had blown away, we were
clear of the snag, and looking ahead I could see that in another
hundred yards or so I would be free to sheer off, away from the bank;
but my feet felt so very warm and wet that I had to look down. The man
had rolled on his back and stared straight up at me; both his hands
clutched that cane. It was the shaft of a spear that, either thrown or
lunged through the opening, had caught him in the side, just below the
ribs; the blade had gone in out of sight, after making a frightful
gash; my shoes were full; a pool of blood lay very still, gleaming
dark-red under the wheel; his eyes shone with an amazing lustre. The
fusillade burst out again. He looked at me anxiously, gripping the
spear like something precious, with an air of being afraid I would try
to take it away from him. I had to make an effort to free my eyes from
his gaze and attend to the steering. With one hand I felt above my head
for the line of the steam whistle, and jerked out screech after screech
hurriedly. The tumult of angry and warlike yells was checked instantly,
and then from the depths of the woods went out such a tremulous and
prolonged wail of mournful fear and utter despair as may be imagined to
follow the flight of the last hope from the earth. There was a great
commotion in the bush; the shower of arrows stopped, a few dropping
shots rang out sharply—then silence, in which the languid beat of the
stern-wheel came plainly to my ears. I put the helm hard a-starboard at
the moment when the pilgrim in pink pyjamas, very hot and agitated,
appeared in the doorway. ‘The manager sends me—’ he began in an
official tone, and stopped short. ‘Good God!’ he said, glaring at the
wounded man.
“We two whites stood over him, and his lustrous and inquiring glance
enveloped us both. I declare it looked as though he would presently put
to us some questions in an understandable language; but he died without
uttering a sound, without moving a limb, without twitching a muscle.
Only in the very last moment, as though in response to some sign we
could not see, to some whisper we could not hear, he frowned heavily,
and that frown gave to his black death-mask an inconceivably sombre,
brooding, and menacing expression. The lustre of inquiring glance faded
swiftly into vacant glassiness. ‘Can you steer?’ I asked the agent
eagerly. He looked very dubious; but I made a grab at his arm, and he
understood at once I meant him to steer whether or no. To tell you the
truth, I was morbidly anxious to change my shoes and socks. ‘He is
dead,’ murmured the fellow, immensely impressed. ‘No doubt about it,’
said I, tugging like mad at the shoe-laces. ‘And by the way, I suppose
Mr. Kurtz is dead as well by this time.’
“For the moment that was the dominant thought. There was a sense of
extreme disappointment, as though I had found out I had been striving
after something altogether without a substance. I couldn’t have been
more disgusted if I had travelled all this way for the sole purpose of
talking with Mr. Kurtz. Talking with... I flung one shoe overboard, and
became aware that that was exactly what I had been looking forward to—a
talk with Kurtz. I made the strange discovery that I had never imagined
him as doing, you know, but as discoursing. I didn’t say to myself,
‘Now I will never see him,’ or ‘Now I will never shake him by the
hand,’ but, ‘Now I will never hear him.’ The man presented himself as a
voice. Not of course that I did not connect him with some sort of
action. Hadn’t I been told in all the tones of jealousy and admiration
that he had collected, bartered, swindled, or stolen more ivory than
all the other agents together? That was not the point. The point was in
his being a gifted creature, and that of all his gifts the one that
stood out preeminently, that carried with it a sense of real presence,
was his ability to talk, his words—the gift of expression, the
bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most
contemptible, the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from
the heart of an impenetrable darkness.
“The other shoe went flying unto the devil-god of that river. I
thought, ‘By Jove! it’s all over. We are too late; he has vanished—the
gift has vanished, by means of some spear, arrow, or club. I will never
hear that chap speak after all’—and my sorrow had a startling
extravagance of emotion, even such as I had noticed in the howling
sorrow of these savages in the bush. I couldn’t have felt more of
lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed
my destiny in life.... Why do you sigh in this beastly way, somebody?
Absurd? Well, absurd. Good Lord! mustn’t a man ever—Here, give me some
tobacco.”...
There was a pause of profound stillness, then a match flared, and
Marlow’s lean face appeared, worn, hollow, with downward folds and
dropped eyelids, with an aspect of concentrated attention; and as he
took vigorous draws at his pipe, it seemed to retreat and advance out
of the night in the regular flicker of tiny flame. The match went out.
“Absurd!” he cried. “This is the worst of trying to tell.... Here you
all are, each moored with two good addresses, like a hulk with two
anchors, a butcher round one corner, a policeman round another,
excellent appetites, and temperature normal—you hear—normal from year’s
end to year’s end. And you say, Absurd! Absurd be—exploded! Absurd! My
dear boys, what can you expect from a man who out of sheer nervousness
had just flung overboard a pair of new shoes! Now I think of it, it is
amazing I did not shed tears. I am, upon the whole, proud of my
fortitude. I was cut to the quick at the idea of having lost the
inestimable privilege of listening to the gifted Kurtz. Of course I was
wrong. The privilege was waiting for me. Oh, yes, I heard more than
enough. And I was right, too. A voice. He was very little more than a
voice. And I heard—him—it—this voice—other voices—all of them were so
little more than voices—and the memory of that time itself lingers
around me, impalpable, like a dying vibration of one immense jabber,
silly, atrocious, sordid, savage, or simply mean, without any kind of
sense. Voices, voices—even the girl herself—now—”
He was silent for a long time.
“I laid the ghost of his gifts at last with a lie,” he began, suddenly.
“Girl! What? Did I mention a girl? Oh, she is out of it—completely.
They—the women, I mean—are out of it—should be out of it. We must help
them to stay in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours gets
worse. Oh, she had to be out of it. You should have heard the
disinterred body of Mr. Kurtz saying, ‘My Intended.’ You would have
perceived directly then how completely she was out of it. And the lofty
frontal bone of Mr. Kurtz! They say the hair goes on growing sometimes,
but this—ah—specimen, was impressively bald. The wilderness had patted
him on the head, and, behold, it was like a ball—an ivory ball; it had
caressed him, and—lo!—he had withered; it had taken him, loved him,
embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his
soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish
initiation. He was its spoiled and pampered favourite. Ivory? I should
think so. Heaps of it, stacks of it. The old mud shanty was bursting
with it. You would think there was not a single tusk left either above
or below the ground in the whole country. ‘Mostly fossil,’ the manager
had remarked, disparagingly. It was no more fossil than I am; but they
call it fossil when it is dug up. It appears these niggers do bury the
tusks sometimes—but evidently they couldn’t bury this parcel deep
enough to save the gifted Mr. Kurtz from his fate. We filled the
steamboat with it, and had to pile a lot on the deck. Thus he could see
and enjoy as long as he could see, because the appreciation of this
favour had remained with him to the last. You should have heard him
say, ‘My ivory.’ Oh, yes, I heard him. ‘My Intended, my ivory, my
station, my river, my—’ everything belonged to him. It made me hold my
breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into a prodigious
peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places.
Everything belonged to him—but that was a trifle. The thing was to know
what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their
own. That was the reflection that made you creepy all over. It was
impossible—it was not good for one either—trying to imagine. He had
taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land—I mean literally. You
can’t understand. How could you?—with solid pavement under your feet,
surrounded by kind neighbours ready to cheer you or to fall on you,
stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy
terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums—how can you imagine
what particular region of the first ages a man’s untrammelled feet may
take him into by the way of solitude—utter solitude without a
policeman—by the way of silence—utter silence, where no warning voice
of a kind neighbour can be heard whispering of public opinion? These
little things make all the great difference. When they are gone you
must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your own capacity
for faithfulness. Of course you may be too much of a fool to go
wrong—too dull even to know you are being assaulted by the powers of
darkness. I take it, no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the
devil; the fool is too much of a fool, or the devil too much of a
devil—I don’t know which. Or you may be such a thunderingly exalted
creature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly
sights and sounds. Then the earth for you is only a standing place—and
whether to be like this is your loss or your gain I won’t pretend to
say. But most of us are neither one nor the other. The earth for us is
a place to live in, where we must put up with sights, with sounds, with
smells, too, by Jove!—breathe dead hippo, so to speak, and not be
contaminated. And there, don’t you see? Your strength comes in, the
faith in your ability for the digging of unostentatious holes to bury
the stuff in—your power of devotion, not to yourself, but to an
obscure, back-breaking business. And that’s difficult enough. Mind, I
am not trying to excuse or even explain—I am trying to account to
myself for—for—Mr. Kurtz—for the shade of Mr. Kurtz. This initiated
wraith from the back of Nowhere honoured me with its amazing confidence
before it vanished altogether. This was because it could speak English
to me. The original Kurtz had been educated partly in England, and—as
he was good enough to say himself—his sympathies were in the right
place. His mother was half-English, his father was half-French. All
Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz; and by and by I learned
that, most appropriately, the International Society for the Suppression
of Savage Customs had intrusted him with the making of a report, for
its future guidance. And he had written it, too. I’ve seen it. I’ve
read it. It was eloquent, vibrating with eloquence, but too
high-strung, I think. Seventeen pages of close writing he had found
time for! But this must have been before his—let us say—nerves, went
wrong, and caused him to preside at certain midnight dances ending with
unspeakable rites, which—as far as I reluctantly gathered from what I
heard at various times—were offered up to him—do you understand?—to Mr.
Kurtz himself. But it was a beautiful piece of writing. The opening
paragraph, however, in the light of later information, strikes me now
as ominous. He began with the argument that we whites, from the point
of development we had arrived at, ‘must necessarily appear to them
[savages] in the nature of supernatural beings—we approach them with
the might of a deity,’ and so on, and so on. ‘By the simple exercise of
our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded,’ etc.,
etc. From that point he soared and took me with him. The peroration was
magnificent, though difficult to remember, you know. It gave me the
notion of an exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence. It made
me tingle with enthusiasm. This was the unbounded power of eloquence—of
words—of burning noble words. There were no practical hints to
interrupt the magic current of phrases, unless a kind of note at the
foot of the last page, scrawled evidently much later, in an unsteady
hand, may be regarded as the exposition of a method. It was very
simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic
sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of
lightning in a serene sky: ‘Exterminate all the brutes!’ The curious
part was that he had apparently forgotten all about that valuable
postscriptum, because, later on, when he in a sense came to himself, he
repeatedly entreated me to take good care of ‘my pamphlet’ (he called
it), as it was sure to have in the future a good influence upon his
career. I had full information about all these things, and, besides, as
it turned out, I was to have the care of his memory. I’ve done enough
for it to give me the indisputable right to lay it, if I choose, for an
everlasting rest in the dust-bin of progress, amongst all the sweepings
and, figuratively speaking, all the dead cats of civilization. But
then, you see, I can’t choose. He won’t be forgotten. Whatever he was,
he was not common. He had the power to charm or frighten rudimentary
souls into an aggravated witch-dance in his honour; he could also fill
the small souls of the pilgrims with bitter misgivings: he had one
devoted friend at least, and he had conquered one soul in the world
that was neither rudimentary nor tainted with self-seeking. No; I can’t
forget him, though I am not prepared to affirm the fellow was exactly
worth the life we lost in getting to him. I missed my late helmsman
awfully—I missed him even while his body was still lying in the
pilot-house. Perhaps you will think it passing strange this regret for
a savage who was no more account than a grain of sand in a black
Sahara. Well, don’t you see, he had done something, he had steered; for
months I had him at my back—a help—an instrument. It was a kind of
partnership. He steered for me—I had to look after him, I worried about
his deficiencies, and thus a subtle bond had been created, of which I
only became aware when it was suddenly broken. And the intimate
profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to
this day in my memory—like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a
supreme moment.
“Poor fool! If he had only left that shutter alone. He had no
restraint, no restraint—just like Kurtz—a tree swayed by the wind. As
soon as I had put on a dry pair of slippers, I dragged him out, after
first jerking the spear out of his side, which operation I confess I
performed with my eyes shut tight. His heels leaped together over the
little doorstep; his shoulders were pressed to my breast; I hugged him
from behind desperately. Oh! he was heavy, heavy; heavier than any man
on earth, I should imagine. Then without more ado I tipped him
overboard. The current snatched him as though he had been a wisp of
grass, and I saw the body roll over twice before I lost sight of it for
ever. All the pilgrims and the manager were then congregated on the
awning-deck about the pilot-house, chattering at each other like a
flock of excited magpies, and there was a scandalized murmur at my
heartless promptitude. What they wanted to keep that body hanging about
for I can’t guess. Embalm it, maybe. But I had also heard another, and
a very ominous, murmur on the deck below. My friends the wood-cutters
were likewise scandalized, and with a better show of reason—though I
admit that the reason itself was quite inadmissible. Oh, quite! I had
made up my mind that if my late helmsman was to be eaten, the fishes
alone should have him. He had been a very second-rate helmsman while
alive, but now he was dead he might have become a first-class
temptation, and possibly cause some startling trouble. Besides, I was
anxious to take the wheel, the man in pink pyjamas showing himself a
hopeless duffer at the business.
“This I did directly the simple funeral was over. We were going
half-speed, keeping right in the middle of the stream, and I listened
to the talk about me. They had given up Kurtz, they had given up the
station; Kurtz was dead, and the station had been burnt—and so on—and
so on. The red-haired pilgrim was beside himself with the thought that
at least this poor Kurtz had been properly avenged. ‘Say! We must have
made a glorious slaughter of them in the bush. Eh? What do you think?
Say?’ He positively danced, the bloodthirsty little gingery beggar. And
he had nearly fainted when he saw the wounded man! I could not help
saying, ‘You made a glorious lot of smoke, anyhow.’ I had seen, from
the way the tops of the bushes rustled and flew, that almost all the
shots had gone too high. You can’t hit anything unless you take aim and
fire from the shoulder; but these chaps fired from the hip with their
eyes shut. The retreat, I maintained—and I was right—was caused by the
screeching of the steam whistle. Upon this they forgot Kurtz, and began
to howl at me with indignant protests.
“The manager stood by the wheel murmuring confidentially about the
necessity of getting well away down the river before dark at all
events, when I saw in the distance a clearing on the riverside and the
outlines of some sort of building. ‘What’s this?’ I asked. He clapped
his hands in wonder. ‘The station!’ he cried. I edged in at once, still
going half-speed.
“Through my glasses I saw the slope of a hill interspersed with rare
trees and perfectly free from undergrowth. A long decaying building on
the summit was half buried in the high grass; the large holes in the
peaked roof gaped black from afar; the jungle and the woods made a
background. There was no enclosure or fence of any kind; but there had
been one apparently, for near the house half-a-dozen slim posts
remained in a row, roughly trimmed, and with their upper ends
ornamented with round carved balls. The rails, or whatever there had
been between, had disappeared. Of course the forest surrounded all
that. The river-bank was clear, and on the waterside I saw a white man
under a hat like a cart-wheel beckoning persistently with his whole
arm. Examining the edge of the forest above and below, I was almost
certain I could see movements—human forms gliding here and there. I
steamed past prudently, then stopped the engines and let her drift
down. The man on the shore began to shout, urging us to land. ‘We have
been attacked,’ screamed the manager. ‘I know—I know. It’s all right,’
yelled back the other, as cheerful as you please. ‘Come along. It’s all
right. I am glad.’
“His aspect reminded me of something I had seen—something funny I had
seen somewhere. As I manoeuvred to get alongside, I was asking myself,
‘What does this fellow look like?’ Suddenly I got it. He looked like a
harlequin. His clothes had been made of some stuff that was brown
holland probably, but it was covered with patches all over, with bright
patches, blue, red, and yellow—patches on the back, patches on the
front, patches on elbows, on knees; coloured binding around his jacket,
scarlet edging at the bottom of his trousers; and the sunshine made him
look extremely gay and wonderfully neat withal, because you could see
how beautifully all this patching had been done. A beardless, boyish
face, very fair, no features to speak of, nose peeling, little blue
eyes, smiles and frowns chasing each other over that open countenance
like sunshine and shadow on a wind-swept plain. ‘Look out, captain!’ he
cried; ‘there’s a snag lodged in here last night.’ What! Another snag?
I confess I swore shamefully. I had nearly holed my cripple, to finish
off that charming trip. The harlequin on the bank turned his little
pug-nose up to me. ‘You English?’ he asked, all smiles. ‘Are you?’ I
shouted from the wheel. The smiles vanished, and he shook his head as
if sorry for my disappointment. Then he brightened up. ‘Never mind!’ he
cried encouragingly. ‘Are we in time?’ I asked. ‘He is up there,’ he
replied, with a toss of the head up the hill, and becoming gloomy all
of a sudden. His face was like the autumn sky, overcast one moment and
bright the next.
“When the manager, escorted by the pilgrims, all of them armed to the
teeth, had gone to the house this chap came on board. ‘I say, I don’t
like this. These natives are in the bush,’ I said. He assured me
earnestly it was all right. ‘They are simple people,’ he added; ‘well,
I am glad you came. It took me all my time to keep them off.’ ‘But you
said it was all right,’ I cried. ‘Oh, they meant no harm,’ he said; and
as I stared he corrected himself, ‘Not exactly.’ Then vivaciously, ‘My
faith, your pilot-house wants a clean-up!’ In the next breath he
advised me to keep enough steam on the boiler to blow the whistle in
case of any trouble. ‘One good screech will do more for you than all
your rifles. They are simple people,’ he repeated. He rattled away at
such a rate he quite overwhelmed me. He seemed to be trying to make up
for lots of silence, and actually hinted, laughing, that such was the
case. ‘Don’t you talk with Mr. Kurtz?’ I said. ‘You don’t talk with
that man—you listen to him,’ he exclaimed with severe exaltation. ‘But
now—’ He waved his arm, and in the twinkling of an eye was in the
uttermost depths of despondency. In a moment he came up again with a
jump, possessed himself of both my hands, shook them continuously,
while he gabbled: ‘Brother sailor... honour... pleasure... delight...
introduce myself... Russian... son of an arch-priest... Government of
Tambov... What? Tobacco! English tobacco; the excellent English
tobacco! Now, that’s brotherly. Smoke? Where’s a sailor that does not
smoke?”
“The pipe soothed him, and gradually I made out he had run away from
school, had gone to sea in a Russian ship; ran away again; served some
time in English ships; was now reconciled with the arch-priest. He made
a point of that. ‘But when one is young one must see things, gather
experience, ideas; enlarge the mind.’ ‘Here!’ I interrupted. ‘You can
never tell! Here I met Mr. Kurtz,’ he said, youthfully solemn and
reproachful. I held my tongue after that. It appears he had persuaded a
Dutch trading-house on the coast to fit him out with stores and goods,
and had started for the interior with a light heart and no more idea of
what would happen to him than a baby. He had been wandering about that
river for nearly two years alone, cut off from everybody and
everything. ‘I am not so young as I look. I am twenty-five,’ he said.
‘At first old Van Shuyten would tell me to go to the devil,’ he
narrated with keen enjoyment; ‘but I stuck to him, and talked and
talked, till at last he got afraid I would talk the hind-leg off his
favourite dog, so he gave me some cheap things and a few guns, and told
me he hoped he would never see my face again. Good old Dutchman, Van
Shuyten. I’ve sent him one small lot of ivory a year ago, so that he
can’t call me a little thief when I get back. I hope he got it. And for
the rest I don’t care. I had some wood stacked for you. That was my old
house. Did you see?’
“I gave him Towson’s book. He made as though he would kiss me, but
restrained himself. ‘The only book I had left, and I thought I had lost
it,’ he said, looking at it ecstatically. ‘So many accidents happen to
a man going about alone, you know. Canoes get upset sometimes—and
sometimes you’ve got to clear out so quick when the people get angry.’
He thumbed the pages. ‘You made notes in Russian?’ I asked. He nodded.
‘I thought they were written in cipher,’ I said. He laughed, then
became serious. ‘I had lots of trouble to keep these people off,’ he
said. ‘Did they want to kill you?’ I asked. ‘Oh, no!’ he cried, and
checked himself. ‘Why did they attack us?’ I pursued. He hesitated,
then said shamefacedly, ‘They don’t want him to go.’ ‘Don’t they?’ I
said curiously. He nodded a nod full of mystery and wisdom. ‘I tell
you,’ he cried, ‘this man has enlarged my mind.’ He opened his arms
wide, staring at me with his little blue eyes that were perfectly
round.”
III