The Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad
I)
XML version 30 November 1997 by David Megginson, dmeggins@microstar.com (still needs to
be proofread against the printed edition).
II)
TEI markup added April 1995 by David Megginson, dmeggins@aix1.uottawa.ca
III)
Corrections to typos made 6/22/94 by PDCChristy@aol.com
IV)
Original etext came from the Online Book Initiative (OBI) via the Internet Wiretap
[obi/Joseph.Conrad/heart.of.darkness.txt]
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 spirits. 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 mizzenmast. 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 round flanks
full of treasure, to be visited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the
gigantic tale, to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests -- and that never
returned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from Deptford, from
Greenwich, from Erith -- the adventurers and the settlers; kings' ships and the ships
of men on `Change; captains, admirals, the dark "interlopers" of the Eastern trade,
and the commissioned "generals" of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers
of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch,
messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire.
What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an
unknown earth! ... The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of
empires.
The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear along the shore.
The Chapman lighthouse, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone strongly.
Lights of ships moved in the fairway -- a great stir of lights going up and going
down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was
still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under
the stars.
``And this also,'' said Marlow suddenly, ``has been one of the dark places of the
earth.''
He was the only man of us who still ``followed the sea.'' The worst that could be
said of him was that he did not represent his class. He was a seaman, but he was a
wanderer, too, while most seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life.
Their minds are of the stay-at-home order, and their home is always with them -- the
ship; and so is their country -- the sea. One ship is very much like another, and the
sea is always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores,
the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of
mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a
seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as
inscrutable as Destiny. For the rest, after his hours of work, a casual stroll or a
casual spree on shore suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole continent, and
generally he finds the secret not worth knowing. The yarns of seamen have a direct
simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But
Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the
meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale
which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these
misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of
moonshine.
His remark did not seem at all surprising. It was just like Marlow. It was accepted in
silence. No one took the trouble to grunt even; and presently he said, very slow --
``I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen
hundred years ago -- the other day... Light came out of this river since -- you say
Knights? Yes; but it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the
clouds. We live in the flicker -- may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But
darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine -- what
d'ye call 'em? -- trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north run
overland across the Gauls in a hurry; put in charge of one of these craft the
legionaries -- a wonderful lot of handy men they must have been, too -- used to
build, apparently by the hundred, in a month or two, if we may believe what we
read. Imagine him here -- the very end of the world, a sea the 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 best like to hear; ``yet to understand the effect
of it on me you ought to know how I got out there, what I saw, how I went up that
river to the place where I first met the poor chap. It was the farthest point of
navigation and the culminating point of my experience. It seemed somehow to throw
a kind of light on everything about me -- and into my thoughts. It was 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 Equator, and in every sort of
latitude all over the two hemispheres. I have been in some of them, and ... well, we
won't talk about that. But there was one yet -- the biggest, the most blank, so to
speak -- that I had a hankering after.
``True, by this time it was not a blank space any more. It had got filled since my
boyhood with rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased to be a blank space of
delightful mystery -- a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. It had become
a place of darkness. But there was in it one river especially, a mighty big river, that
you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in
the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths
of the land. And as I looked at the map of it in a shop-window, it fascinated me as a
snake would a bird -- a silly little bird. Then I remembered there was a big concern,
a Company for trade on that river. Dash it all! I thought to myself, they can't trade
without using some kind of craft on that lot of fresh water -- steamboats! Why
shouldn't I try to get charge of one? I went on along Fleet Street, but could not shake
off the idea. The snake had charmed me.
``You understand it was a Continental concern, that Trading society; but I have a lot
of relations living on the Continent, because it's cheap and not so nasty as it looks,
they say.
``I am sorry to own I began to worry them. This was already a fresh departure for
me. I was not used to get things that way, you know. I always went my own road
and on my own legs where I had a mind to go. I wouldn't have believed it of myself;
but, then -- you see -- I felt somehow I must get there by hook or by crook. So I
worried them. The men said `My dear fellow,' and did nothing. Then -- would you
believe it? -- I tried the women. I, Charlie Marlow, set the women to work -- to get a
job. Heavens! We]l, 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., 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 snow 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.
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!' `H'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 dosed
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 travelling 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 over-shadowed distances. On silvery sandbanks
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 to 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 steampipes -- 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 hindlegs. A few months of training had
done for that really fine chap. He squinted at the steam-gauge and at the water-guage
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 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.
``Some fifty miles below the Inner Station we came upon a hut of reeds, 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 woodpile. 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 woodpile 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