Joseph Conrad ..........................................................................................................................................1

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

The seareach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the

offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of

the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams

of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark

above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over

The 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 yarnsand

even convictions. The Lawyerthe 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 crosslegged 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 marshes 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,

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

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 knightserrant 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 Eriththe 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

The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear along the shore. The Chapman lighthouse,

a threelegged thing erect on a mudflat, shone strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairwaya 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 stayathome order, and their home is always with them

the ship; and so is their countrythe 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

His remark did not seem at all surprising. It was just like Marlow. It was accepted in silence. No one took the

"I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years agothe other

day. . . . Light came out of this river sinceyou 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 flickermay it last as long as the old earth keeps

rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of a finewhat 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

herethe very end of the world, a sea the color of lead, a sky the color of smoke, a kind of ship about as

rigid as a concertinaand going up this river with stores, or orders, or what you like. Sandbanks, 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 yeshe 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 byandby, if he had good friends in Rome and survived the

awful climate. Or think of a decent young citizen in a togaperhaps too much dice, you knowcoming out

here in the train of some prefect, or taxgatherer, 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

abominationyou know. Imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the

"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 lotusflower

"Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves us is efficiencythe 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

forcenothing 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 pretense 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 otherthen separating slowly or hastily. The traffic of the great city went on in the

deepening night upon the sleepless river. We looked on, waiting patientlythere 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 freshwater sailor for a bit," that we knew we were fated, before the ebb

"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 somber enough tooand pitifulnot extraordinary in any waynot very clear

"I had then, as you remember, just returned to London after a lot of Indian Ocean, Pacific, China Seas a

regular dose of the Eastsix 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 shipI 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 yetthe biggest, the most blank, so to speakthat I had a

"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 mysterya 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 shopwindow, it fascinated me as a snake would a birda 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

"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, thenyou 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. Thenwould you believe it?I

tried the women. I, Charlie Marlow, set the women to workto get a job. Heavens! Well, you see, the notion

drove me. I had an aunt, a dear enthusiastic soul. She wrote: 'It will be delightful. I am ready to do anything,

anything for you. It is a glorious idea. I know the wife of a very high personage in the Administration, and

also a man who has lots of influence with,' &c., &c. She was determined to make no end of fuss to get me

"I got my appointmentof 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. Fresleventhat was the fellow's name, a Danethought 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 selfrespect 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 manand of course it went quite easy between the shoulderblades.

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

"I flew around like mad to get ready, and before fortyeight hours I was crossing the Channel to show myself

to my employers, and sign the contract. In a very few hours I arrived in a city that always makes me think of

a whited sepulcher. 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 oversea empire, and

"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 strawbottomed chairs, knitting black wool. The slim one got up and walked straight at mestill knitting

with downcast eyesand 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 waitingroom. 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 colors of a

rainbow. There was a vast amount of redgood 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 lagerbeer. However, I wasn't going into any of

these. I was going into the yellow. Dead in the center. And the river was therefascinatingdeadlylike a

snake. Ough! A door opened, a whitehaired secretarial head, but wearing a compassionate expression,

appeared, and a skinny forefinger beckoned me into the sanctuary. Its light was dim, and a heavy

writingdesk squatted in the middle. From behind that structure came out an impression of pale plumpness in

a frockcoat. The great man himself. He was five feet six, I should judge, and had his grip on the handleend

of ever so many millions. He shook hands, I fancy, murmured vaguely, was satisfied with my French. Bon

"In about fortyfive seconds I found myself again in the waitingroom with the compassionate secretary,

who, full of desolation and sympathy, made me sign some document. I believe I undertook amongst other

"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 conspiracyI don't

knowsomething 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 footwarmer, and a cat reposed on

her lap. She wore a starched white affair on her head, had a wart on one cheek, and silverrimmed 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

"There was yet a visit to the doctor. 'A simple formality,' assured me the secretary, with an air of taking an

immense part in all my sorrows. Accordingly a young chap wearing his hat over the left eyebrow, some clerk

I suppose,there must have been clerks in the business, though the house was as still as a house in a city of

the dead,came from somewhere upstairs, and led me forth. He was shabby and careless, with inkstains

on the sleeves of his jacket, and his cravat was large and billowy, under a chin shaped like the toe of an old

boot. It was a little too early for the doctor, so I proposed a drink, and thereupon he developed a vein of

joviality. As we sat over our vermouths he glorified the Company's business, and byandby I expressed

casually my surprise at him not going out there. He became very cool and collected all at once. 'I am not such

a fool as I look, quoth Plato to his disciples,' he said sententiously, emptied his glass with great resolution,

"The old doctor felt my pulse, evidently thinking of something else the while. 'Good, good for there,' he

mumbled, and then with a certain eagerness asked me whether I would let him measure my head. Rather

surprised, I said Yes, when he produced a thing like calipers and got the dimensions back and front and every

way, taking notes carefully. He was an unshaven little man in a threadbare coat like a gaberdine, with his feet

in slippers, and I thought him a harmless fool. 'I always ask leave, in the interests of science, to measure the

crania of those going out there,' he said. 'And when they come back too?' I asked. "Oh, I never see them,' he

remarked; 'and, moreover, the changes take place inside, you know.' He smiled, as if at some quiet joke. 'So

you are going out there. Famous. Interesting too.' He gave me a searching glance, and made another note.

'Ever any madness in your family?' he asked, in a matteroffact tone. I felt very annoyed. 'Is that question in

the interests of science too?' 'It would be,' he said, without taking notice of my irritation, 'interesting for

science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot, but . . .' 'Are you an alienist?' I interrupted.

'Every doctor should bea little,' answered that original, imperturbably. 'I have a little theory which you

Messieurs who go out there must help me to prove. This is my share in the advantages my country shall reap

from the possession of such a magnificent dependency. The mere wealth I leave to others. Pardon my

questions, but you are the first Englishman coming under my observation. . . .' I hastened to assure him I was

not in the least typical. 'If I were,' said I, 'I wouldn't be talking like this with you.' 'What you say is rather

profound, and probably erroneous,' he said, with a laugh. 'Avoid irritation more than exposure to the sun.

Adieu. How do you English say, eh? Goodby. Ah! Goodby. Adieu. In the tropics one must before

everything keep calm.' . . . He lifted a warning forefinger. . . . 'Du calme, du calme. Adieu.'

"One thing more remained to dosay goodby to my excellent aunt. I found her triumphant. I had a cup of

teathe last decent cup of tea for many days and in a room that most soothingly looked just as you would

expect a lady's drawingroom to look, we had a long quiet chat by the fireside. In the course of these

confidences it became quite plain to me I had been represented to the wife of the high dignitary, and

goodness knows to how many more people besides, as an exceptional and gifted creaturea piece of good

fortune for the Companya man you don't get hold of every day. Good heavens! and I was going to take

charge of a twopennyhalfpenny riversteamboat with a penny whistle attached! It appeared, however, I

was also one of the Workers, with a capitalyou know. Something like an emissary of light, something like

a lower sort of apostle. There had been a lot of such rot let loose in print and talk just about that time, and the

excellent woman, living right in the rush of all that humbug, got carried off her feet. She talked about

'weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways,' till, upon my word, she made me quite

"'You forget, dear Charlie, that the laborer is worthy of his hire,' she said, brightly. It's queer how out of touch

with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there had never been anything like it, and never

can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset.

Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start

"After this I got embraced, told to wear flannel, be sure to write often, and so onand I left. In the street I

don't know whya queer feeling came to me that I was an impostor. Odd thing that I, who used to clear out

for any part of the world at twentyfour hours' notice, with less thought than most men give to the crossing of

a street, had a momentI won't say of hesitation, but of startled pause, before this commonplace affair. The

best way I can explain it to you is by saying that, for a second or two, I felt as though, instead of going to the

"I left in a French steamer, and she called in every blamed port they have out there, for, as far as I could see,

the sole purpose of landing soldiers and customhouse officers. I watched the coast. Watching a coast as it

slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before yousmiling, frowning, inviting, grand,

mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, Come and find out. This one was almost

featureless, as if still in the making, with an aspect of monotonous grimness. The edge of a colossal jungle, so

darkgreen as to be almost black, fringed with white surf, ran straight, like a ruled line, far, far away along a

blue sea whose glitter was blurred by a creeping mist. The sun was fierce, the land seemed to glisten and drip

with steam. Here and there grayishwhitish specks showed up, clustered inside the white surf, with a flag

flying above them perhaps. Settlements some centuries old, and still no bigger than pinheads on the

untouched expanse of their background. We pounded along, stopped, landed soldiers; went on, landed

customhouse clerks to levy toll in what looked like a Godforsaken wilderness, with a tin shed and a

flagpole lost in it; landed more soldiersto take care of the customhouse clerks, presumably. Some, I

heard, got drowned in the surf; but whether they did or not, nobody seemed particularly to care. They were

just flung out there, and on we went. Every day the coast looked the same, as though we had not moved; but

we passed various placestrading placeswith names like Gran' Bassam Little Popo, names that seemed to

belong to some sordid farce acted in front of a sinister backcloth. The idleness of a passenger, my isolation

amongst all these men with whom I had no point of contact, the oily and languid sea, the uniform somberness

of the coast, seemed to keep me away from the truth of things, within the toil of a mournful and senseless

delusion. The voice of the surf heard now and then was a positive pleasure, like the speech of a brother. It

was something natural, that had its reason, that had a meaning. Now and then a boat from the shore gave one

a momentary contact with reality. It was paddled by black fellows. You could see from afar the white of their

eyeballs glistening. They shouted, sang; their bodies streamed with perspiration; they had faces like grotesque

masksthese chaps; but they had bone, muscle, a wild vitality, an intense energy of movement, that was as

natural and true as the surf along their coast. They wanted no excuse for being there. They were a great

comfort to look at. For a time I would feel I belonged still to a world of straightforward facts; but the feeling

would not last long. Something would turn up to scare it away. Once, I remember, we came upon a

manofwar anchored off the coast. There wasn't even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It appears

the French had one of their wars going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the

long eightinch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily and let her

down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was,

incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the eightinch guns; a small flame would dart

and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech and nothing

happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious

drollery in the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there was a camp

"We gave her her letters (I heard the men in that lonely ship were dying of fever at the rate of three a day) and

went on. We called at some more places with farcical names, where the merry dance of death and trade goes

on in a still and earthy atmosphere as of an overheated catacomb; all along the formless coast bordered by

dangerous surf, as if Nature herself had tried to ward off intruders; in and out of rivers, streams of death in

life, whose banks were rotting into mud, whose waters, thickened into slime, invaded the contorted

mangroves, that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair. Nowhere did we stop long

enough to get a particularized impression, but the general sense of vague and oppressive wonder grew upon

"It was upward of thirty days before I saw the mouth of the big river. We anchored off the seat of the

government. But my work would not begin till some two hundred miles farther on. So as soon as I could I

"I had my passage on a little seagoing steamer. Her captain was a Swede, and knowing me for a seaman,

invited me on the bridge. He was a young man, lean, fair, and morose, with lanky hair and a shuffling gait. As

we left the miserable little wharf, he tossed his head contemptuously at the shore. 'Been living there?' he

asked. I said, 'Yes.' 'Fine lot these government chaps are they not?' he went on, speaking English with great

precision and considerable bitterness. 'It is funny what some people will do for a few francs a month. I

wonder what becomes of that kind when it goes up country ?' I said to him I expected to see that soon.

'Sooo!' he exclaimed. He shuffled athwart, keeping one eye ahead vigilantly. 'Don't be too sure,' he

continued. 'The other day I took up a man who hanged himself on the road. He was a Swede, too.' 'Hanged

himself! Why, in God's name?' I cried. He kept on looking out watchfully. 'Who knows? The sun too much

"At last we opened a reach. A rocky cliff appeared, mounds of turnedup earth by the shore, houses on a hill,

others, with iron roofs, amongst a waste of excavations, or hanging to the declivity. A continuous noise of the

rapids above hovered over this scene of inhabited devastation. A lot of people, mostly black and naked,

moved about like ants. A jetty projected into the river. A blinding sunlight drowned all this at times in a

sudden recrudescence of glare. 'There's your Company's station,' said the Swede, pointing to three wooden

barracklike structures on the rocky slope. 'I will send your things up. Four boxes did you say? So. Farewell.'

"I came upon a boiler wallowing in the grass, then found a path leading up the hill. It turned aside for the

bowlders, and also for an undersized railwaytruck lying there on its back with its wheels in the air. One was

off. The thing looked as dead as the carcass of some animal. I came upon more pieces of decaying machinery,

a stack of rusty rails. To the left a clump of trees made a shady spot, where dark things seemed to stir feebly.

I blinked, the path was steep. A horn tooted to the right, and I saw the black people run. A heavy and dull

detonation shook the ground, a puff of smoke came out of the cliff, and that was all. No change appeared on

the face of the rock. They were building a railway. The cliff was not in the way or anything; but this

"A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path.

They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with

their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends behind wagged to and fro like

tails. I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his

neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking.

Another report from the cliff made me think suddenly of that ship of war I had seen firing into a continent. It

was the same kind of ominous voice; but these men could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies.

They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come to them, an insoluble

mystery from over the sea. All their meager breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered,

the eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete,

deathlike indifference of unhappy savages. Behind this raw matter one of the reclaimed, the product of the

new forces at work, strolled despondently, carrying a rifle by its middle. He had a uniform jacket with one

button off, and seeing a white man on the path, hoisted his weapon to his shoulder with alacrity. This was

simple prudence, white men being so much alike at a distance that he could not tell who I might be. He was

speedily reassured, and with a large, white, rascally grin, and a glance at his charge, seemed to take me into

partnership in his exalted trust. After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just

"Instead of going up, I turned and descended to the left. My idea was to let that chaingang get out of sight

before I climbed the hill. You know I am not particularly tender; I've had to strike and to fend off. I've had to

resist and to attack sometimesthat's only one way of resistingwithout counting the exact cost, according

to the demands of such sort of life as I had blundered into. I've seen the devil of violence, and the devil of

greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! these were strong, lusty, redeyed devils, that swayed

and drove menmen, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that

land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weakeyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly.

How insidious he could be, too, I was only to find out several months later and a thousand miles farther. For a

moment I stood appalled, as though by a warning. Finally I descended the hill, obliquely, towards the trees I

"I avoided a vast artificial hole somebody had been digging on the slope, the purpose of which I found it

impossible to divine. It wasn't a quarry or a sandpit, anyhow. It was just a hole. It might have been connected

with the philanthropic desire of giving the criminals something to do. I don't know. Then I nearly fell into a

very narrow ravine, almost no more than a scar in the hillside. I discovered that a lot of imported

drainagepipes for the settlement had been tumbled in there. There wasn't one that was not broken. It was a

wanton smashup. At last I got under the trees. My purpose was to stroll into the shade for a moment; but no

sooner within than it seemed to me I had stepped into a gloomy circle of some Inferno. The rapids were near,

and an uninterrupted, uniform, headlong, rushing noise filled the mournful stillness of the grove, where not a

breath stirred, not a leaf moved, with a mysterious soundas though the tearing pace of the launched earth

"Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees, leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half

coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair. Another

mine on the cliff went off, followed by a slight shudder of the soil under my feet. The work was going on.

The work! And this was the place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die.

"They were dying slowlyit was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were

nothing earthly now,nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish

gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial

surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away

and rest. These moribund shapes were free as airand nearly as thin. I began to distinguish the gleam of

eyes under the trees. Then, glancing down, I saw a face near my hand. The black bones reclined at full length

with one shoulder against the tree, and slowly the eyelids rose and the sunken eyes looked up at me,

enormous and vacant, a kind of blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs, which died out slowly. The man

seemed youngalmost a boybut you know with them it's hard to tell. I found nothing else to do but to

offer him one of my good Swede's ship's biscuits I had in my pocket. The fingers closed slowly on it and

heldthere was no other movement and no other glance. He had tied a bit of white worsted round his

neckWhy? Where did he get it? Was it a badgean ornamenta charma propitiatory act? Was there

any idea at all connected with it? It looked startling round his black neck, this bit of white thread from beyond

"Near the same tree two more bundles of acute angles sat with their legs drawn up. One, with his chin

propped on his knees, stared at nothing, in an intolerable and appalling manner: his brother phantom rested its

forehead, as if overcome with a great weariness; and all about others were scattered in every pose of

contorted collapse, as in some picture of a massacre or a pestilence. While I stood horrorstruck, one of these

creatures rose to his hands and knees, and went off on allfours towards the river to drink. He lapped out of

his hand, then sat up in the sunlight, crossing his shins in front of him, and after a time let his woolly head fall

"I didn't want any more loitering in the shade, and I made haste towards the station. When near the buildings

I met a white man, in such an unexpected elegance of getup that in the first moment I took him for a sort of

vision. I saw a high starched collar, white cuffs, a light alpaca jacket, snowy trousers, a clear necktie, and

varnished boots. No hat. Hair parted, brushed, oiled, under a greenlined parasol held in a big white hand. He

"I shook hands with this miracle, and I learned he was the Company's chief accountant, and that all the

bookkeeping was done at this station. He had come out for a moment, he said, 'to get a breath of fresh air.'

The expression sounded wonderfully odd, with its suggestion of sedentary desklife. I wouldn't have

mentioned the fellow to you at all, only it was from his lips that I first heard the name of the man who is so

indissolubly connected with the memories of that time. Moreover, I respected the fellow. Yes; I respected his

collars, his vast cuffs, his brushed hair. His appearance was certainly that of a hairdresser's dummy; but in the

great demoralization of the land he kept up his appearance. That's backbone. His starched collars and gotup

shirtfronts were achievements of character. He had been out nearly three years; and, later on, I could not help

asking him how he managed to sport such linen. He had just the faintest blush, and said modestly, 'I've been

teaching one of the native women about the station. It was difficult. She had a distaste for the work.' This

man had verily accomplished something. And he was devoted to his books, which were in applepie order.

"Everything else in the station was in a muddle, heads, things, buildings. Strings of dusty niggers with

splay feet arrived and departed; a stream of manufactured goods, rubbishy cottons, beads, and brasswire set

"I had to wait in the station for ten daysan eternity. I lived in a hut in the yard, but to be out of the chaos I

would sometimes get into the accountant's office. It was built of horizontal planks, and so badly put together

that, as he bent over his high desk, he was barred from neck to heels with narrow strips of sunlight. There was

no need to open the big shutter to see. It was hot there too; big flies buzzed fiendishly, and did not sting, but

stabbed. I sat generally on the floor, while, of faultless appearance (and even slightly scented), perching on a

high stool, he wrote, he wrote. Sometimes he stood up for exercise. When a trucklebed with a sick man

(some invalided agent from upcountry) was put in there, he exhibited a gentle annoyance. 'The groans of

this sick person,' he said, distract my attention. And without that it is extremely difficult to guard against

"One day he remarked, without lifting his head, "In the interior you will no doubt meet Mr. Kurtz.' On my

asking who Mr. Kurtz was, he said he was a firstclass agent; and seeing my disappointment at this

information, he added slowly, laying down his pen, 'He is a very remarkable person.' Further questions

elicited from him that Mr. Kurtz was at present in charge of a trading post, a very important one, in the true

ivorycountry, at 'the very bottom of there. Sends in as much ivory as all the others put together. . . .' He

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

"Suddenly there was a growing murmur of voices and a great tramping of feet. A caravan had come in. A

violent babble of uncouth sounds burst out on the other side of the planks. All the carriers were speaking

together, and in the midst of the uproar the lamentable voice of the chief agent was heard 'giving it up'

tearfully for the twentieth time that day. . . . He rose slowly. 'What a frightful row,' he said. He crossed the

room gently to look at the sick man, and returning, said to me, 'He does not hear.' 'What! Dead?' I asked,

startled. 'No, not yet,' he answered, with great composure. Then, alluding with a toss of the head to the tumult

in the stationyard, 'When one has got to make correct entries, one comes to hate those savages hate them

to the death.' He remained thoughtful for a moment. 'When you see Mr. Kurtz,' he went on, 'tell him from me

that everything here'he glanced at the desk'is very satisfactory. I don't like to write to him with those

messengers of ours you never know who may get hold of your letterat that Central Station.' He stared at

me for a moment with his mild, bulging eyes. 'Oh, he will go far, very far,' he began again. 'He will be a

somebody in the Administration before long. They, abovethe Council in Europe, you know mean him to

"He turned to his work. The noise outside had ceased, and presently in going out I stopped at the door. In the

steady buzz of flies the homewardbound agent was lying flushed and insensible; the other, bent over his

books, was making correct entries of perfectly correct transactions; and fifty feet below the doorstep I could

"Next day I left that station at last, with a caravan of sixty men, for a twohundredmile tramp.

"No use telling you much about that. Paths, paths, everywhere; a stampedin network of paths spreading over

the empty land, through long grass, through burnt grass, through thickets, down and up chilly ravines, up and

down stony hills ablaze with heat; and a solitude, a solitude, nobody, not a hut. The population had cleared

out a long time ago. Well, if a lot of mysterious niggers armed with all kinds of fearful weapons suddenly

took to traveling on the road between Deal and Gravesend, catching the yokels right and left to carry heavy

loads for them, I fancy every farm and cottage thereabouts would get empty very soon. Only here the

dwellings were gone too. Still I passed through several abandoned villages. There's something pathetically

childish in the ruins of grass walls. Day after day, with the stamp and shuffle of sixty pair of bare feet behind

me, each pair under a 60lb. load. Camp, cook, sleep, strike camp, march. Now and then a carrier dead in

harness, at rest in the long grass near the path, with an empty watergourd and his long staff lying by his side.

A great silence around and above. Perhaps on some quiet night the tremor of faroff drums, sinking,

swelling, a tremor vast, faint; a sound weird, appealing, suggestive, and wildand perhaps with as profound

a meaning as the sound of bells in a Christian country. Once a white man in an unbuttoned uniform, camping

on the path with an armed escort of lank Zanzibaris, very hospitable and festivenot to say drunk. Was

looking after the upkeep of the road, he declared. Can't say I saw any road or any upkeep, unless the body of

a middleaged negro, with a bullethole in the forehead, upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles

farther on, may be considered as a permanent improvement. I had a white companion too, not a bad chap, but

rather too fleshy and with the exasperating habit of fainting on the hot hillsides, miles away from the least bit

of shade and water. Annoying, you know, to hold your own coat like a parasol over a man's head while he is

comingto. I couldn't help asking him once what he meant by coming there at all. 'To make money, of

course. What do you think?' he said, scornfully. Then he got fever, and had to be carried in a hammock slung

under a pole. As he weighed sixteen stone I had no end of rows with the carriers. They jibbed, ran away,

sneaked off with their loads in the nightquite a mutiny. So, one evening, I made a speech in English with

gestures, not one of which was lost to the sixty pairs of eyes before me, and the next morning I started the

hammock off in front all right. An afterwards I came upon the whole concern wrecked in a bushman,

hammock, groans, blankets, horrors. The heavy pole had skinned his poor nose. He was very anxious for me

to kill somebody, but there wasn't the shadow of a carrier near. I remembered the old doctor,'It would be

interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot.' I felt I was becoming

scientifically interesting. However, all that is to no purpose. On the fifteenth day I came in sight of the big

river again, and hobbled into the Central Station. It was on a back water surrounded by scrub and forest, with

a pretty border of smelly mud on one side, and on the three others inclosed by a crazy fence of rushes. A

neglected gap was all the gate it had, and the first glance at the place was enough to let you see the flabby

devil was running that show. White men with long staves in their hands appeared languidly from amongst the

buildings, strolling up to take a look at me, and then retired out of sight somewhere. One of them, a stout,

excitable chap with black mustaches, informed me with great volubility and many digressions, as soon as I

told him who I was, that my steamer was at the bottom of the river. I was thunderstruck. What, how, why?

Oh, it was 'all right.' The 'manager himself' was there. All quite correct. 'Everybody had behaved splendidly!

splendidly!''you must,' he said in agitation, 'go and see the general manager at once. He is waiting!'

"I did not see the real significance of that wreck at once. I fancy I see it now, but I am not surenot at all.

Certainly the affair was too stupidwhen I think of itto be altogether natural. Still. . . . But at the moment

it presented itself simply as a confounded nuisance. The steamer was sunk. They had started two days before

in a sudden hurry up the river with the manager on board, in charge of some volunteer skipper, and before

they had been out three hours they tore the bottom out of her on stones, and she sank near the south bank. I

asked myself what I was to do there, now my boat was lost. As a matter of fact, I had plenty to do in fishing

my command out of the river. I had to set about it the very next day. That, and the repairs when I brought the

"My first interview with the manager was curious. He did not ask me to sit down after my twentymile walk

that morning. He was commonplace in complexion, in feature, in manners, and in voice. He was of middle

size and of ordinary build. His eyes, of the usual blue, were perhaps remarkably cold, and he certainly could

make his glance fall on one as trenchant and heavy as an ax. But even at these times the rest of his person

seemed to disclaim the intention. Otherwise there was only an indefinable, faint expression of his lips,

something stealthya smilenot a smileI remember it, but I can't explain. It was unconscious, this smile

was, though just after he had said something it got intensified for an instant. It came at the end of his speeches

like a seal applied on the words to make the meaning of the commonest phrase appear absolutely inscrutable.

He was a common trader, from his youth up employed in these partsnothing more. He was obeyed, yet he

inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was it! Uneasiness. Not a

definite mistrustjust uneasinessnothing more. You have no idea how effective such a . . . a . . . faculty

can be. He had no genius for organizing, for initiative, or for order even. That was evident in such things as

the deplorable state of the station. He had no learning, and no intelligence. His position had come to

himwhy? Perhaps because he was never ill . . . He had served three terms of three years out there . . .

Because triumphant health in the general rout of constitutions is a kind of power in itself. When he went

home on leave he rioted on a large scalepompously. Jack ashorewith a differencein externals only.

This one could gather from his casual talk. He originated nothing, he could keep the routine goingthat's all.

But he was great. He was great by this little thing that it was impossible to tell what could control such a man.

He never gave that secret away. Perhaps there was nothing within him. Such a suspicion made one pause

for out there there were no external checks. Once when various tropical diseases had laid low almost every

'agent' in the station, he was heard to say, 'Men who come out here should have no entrails.' He sealed the

utterance with that smile of his, as though it had been a door opening into a darkness he had in his keeping.

You fancied you had seen thingsbut the seal was on. When annoyed at mealtimes by the constant quarrels

of the white men about precedence, he ordered an immense round table to be made, for which a special house

had to be built. This was the station's messroom. Where he sat was the first placethe rest were nowhere.

One felt this to be his unalterable conviction. He was neither civil nor uncivil. He was quiet. He allowed his

'boy' an overfed young negro from the coastto treat the white men, under his very eyes, with provoking

"He began to speak as soon as he saw me. I had been very long on the road. He could not wait. Had to start

without me. The upriver stations had to be relieved. There had been so many delays already that he did not

know who was dead and who was alive, and how they got onand so on, and so on. He paid no attention to

my explanations, and, playing with a stick of sealingwax, repeated several times that the situation was 'very

grave, very grave.' There were rumors that a very important station was in jeopardy, and its chief, Mr. Kurtz,

was ill. Hoped it was not true. Mr. Kurtz was . . . I felt weary and irritable. Hang Kurtz, I thought. I

interrupted him by saying I had heard of Mr. Kurtz on the coast. 'Ah! So they talk of him down there,' he

murmured to himself. Then he began again, assuring me Mr. Kurtz was the best agent he had, an exceptional

man, of the greatest importance to the Company; therefore I could understand his anxiety. He was, he said,

'very, very uneasy.' Certainly he fidget on his chair a good deal, exclaimed, 'Ah, Mr. Kurtz!' broke the stick of

sealingwax and seemed dumbfounded by the accident. Next thing he wanted to know 'how long it would

take to' . . . I interrupted him again. Being hungry, you know, and kept on my feet too, I was getting savage.

'How could I tell,' I said. 'I hadn't even seen the wreck yetsome months, no doubt.' All this talk seemed to

me so futile. 'Some months,' he said. 'Well, let us say three months before we can make a start. Yes. That

ought to do the affair.' I flung out of his hut (he lived all alone in a clay hut with a sort of veranda) muttering

to myself my opinion of him. He was a chattering idiot. Afterwards I took it back when it was borne in upon

me startlingly with what extreme nicety he had estimated the time requisite for the 'affair.'

"I went to work the next day, turning, so to speak, my back on that station. In that way only it seemed to me I

could keep my hold on the redeeming facts of life. Still, one must look about sometimes; and then I saw this

station, these men strolling aimlessly about in the sunshine of the yard. I asked myself sometimes what it all

meant. They wandered here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands, like a lot of faithless

pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten fence. The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You

would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some

corpse. By Jove! I've never seen anything so unreal in my life. And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding

this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting

"Oh, these months! Well, never mind. Various things happened. One evening a grass shed full of calico,

cotton prints, beads, and I don't know what else, burst into a blaze so suddenly that you would have thought

the earth had opened to let an avenging fire consume all that trash. I was smoking my pipe quietly by my

dismantled steamer, and saw them all cutting capers in the light, with their arms lifted high, when the stout

man with mustaches came tearing down to the river, a tin pail in his hand, assured me that everybody was

'behaving splendidly, splendidly, dipped about a quart of water and tore back again. I noticed there was a hole

"I strolled up. There was no hurry. You see the thing had gone off like a box of matches. It had been hopeless

from the very first. The flame had leaped high, driven everybody back, lighted up everythingand

collapsed. The shed was already a heap of embers glowing fiercely. A nigger was being beaten near by. They

said he had caused the fire in some way; be that as it may, he was screeching most horribly. I saw him, later

on, for several days, sitting in a bit of shade looking very sick and trying to recover himself: afterwards he

arose and went outand the wilderness without a sound took him into its bosom again. As I approached the

glow from the dark I found myself at the back of two men, talking. I heard the name of Kurtz pronounced,

then the words, 'take advantage of this unfortunate accident.' One of the men was the manager. I wished him a

good evening. 'Did you ever see anything like iteh? it is incredible,' he said, and walked off. The other man

remained. He was a firstclass agent, young, gentlemanly, a bit reserved, with a forked little beard and a

hooked nose. He was standoffish with the other agents, and they on their side said he was the manager's spy

upon them. As to me, I had hardly ever spoken to him before. We got into talk, and byandby we strolled

away from the hissing ruins. Then he asked me to his room, which was in the main building of the station. He

struck a match, and I perceived that this young aristocrat had not only a silvermounted dressingcase but

also a whole candle all to himself. Just at that time the manager was the only man supposed to have any right

to candles. Native mats covered the clay walls; a collection of spears, assegais, shields, knives was hung up in

trophies. The business intrusted to this fellow was the making of bricksso I had been informed; but there

wasn't a fragment of a brick anywhere in the station, and he had been there more than a yearwaiting. It

seems he could not make bricks without something, I don't know whatstraw maybe. Anyways, it could not

be found there, and as it was not likely to be sent from Europe, it did not appear clear to me what he was

waiting for. An act of special creation perhaps. However, they were all waitingall the sixteen or twenty

pilgrims of themfor something; and upon my word it did not seem an uncongenial occupation, from the

way they took it, though the only thing that ever came to them was diseaseas far as I could see. They

beguiled the time by backbiting and intriguing against each other in a foolish kind of way. There was an air of

plotting about that station, but nothing came of it, of course. It was as unreal as everything elseas the

philanthropic pretense of the whole concern, as their talk, as their government, as their show of work. The

only real feeling was a desire to get appointed to a tradingpost where ivory was to be had, so that they could

earn percentages. They intrigued and slandered and hated each other only on that account,but as to

effectually lifting a little fingeroh, no. By heavens! there is something after all in the world allowing one

man to steal a horse while another must not look at a halter. Steal a horse straight out. Very well. He has done

it. Perhaps he can ride. But there is a way of looking at a halter that would provoke the most charitable of

"I had no idea why he wanted to be sociable, but as we chatted in there it suddenly occurred to me the fellow

was trying to get at somethingin fact, pumping me. He alluded constantly to Europe, to the people I was

supposed to know thereputting leading questions as to my acquaintances in the sepulchral city, and so on.

His little eyes glittered like mica discswith curiosity, though he tried to keep up a bit of

superciliousness. At first I was astonished, but very soon I became awfully curious to see what he would find

out from me. I couldn't possibly imagine what I had in me to make it worth his while. It was very pretty to

see how he baffled himself, for in truth my body was full of chills, and my head had nothing in it but that

wretched steamboat business. It was evident he took me for a perfectly shameless prevaricator. At last he got

angry, and to conceal a movement of furious annoyance, he yawned. I rose. Then I noticed a small sketch in

oils, on a panel, representing a woman, draped and blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch. The background was

somberalmost black. The movement of the woman was stately, and the effect of the torchlight on the face

"It arrested me, and he stood by civilly, holding a halfpint champagne bottle (medical comforts) with the

candle stuck in it. To my question he said Mr. Kurtz had painted thisin this very station more than a year

"'The chief of the Inner Station,' he answered in a short tone, looking away. 'Much obliged,' I said, laughing.

'And you are the brickmaker of the Central Station. Everyone knows that.' He was silent for a while. 'He is a

prodigy,' he said at last. 'He is an emissary of pity, and science, and progress, and devil knows what else. We

want,' he began to declaim suddenly, 'for the guidance of the cause intrusted to us by Europe, so to speak,

higher intelligence, wide sympathies, a singleness of purpose.' 'Who says that?' I asked. 'Lots of them,' he

replied. 'Some even write that; and so HE comes here, a special being, as you ought to know.' 'Why ought I to

know?' I interrupted, really surprised. He paid no attention. 'Yes. Today he is chief of the best station, next

year he will be assistantmanager, two years more and . . . but I dare say you know what he will be in two

years' time. You are of the new gang the gang of virtue. The same people who sent him specially also

recommended you. Oh, don't say no. I've my own eyes to trust.' Light dawned upon me. My dear aunt's

influential acquaintances were producing an unexpected effect upon that young man. I nearly burst into a

laugh. 'Do you read the Company's confidential correspondence?' I asked. He hadn't a word to say. It was

great fun. 'When Mr. Kurtz,' I continued severely, 'is General Manager, you won't have the opportunity.'

"He blew the candle out suddenly, and we went outside. The moon had risen. Black figures strolled about

listlessly, pouring water on the glow, whence proceeded a sound of hissing; steam ascended in the moonlight,

the beaten nigger groaned somewhere. 'What a row the brute makes!' said the indefatigable man with the

mustaches, appearing near us. 'Serve him right. Transgression punishmentbang! Pitiless, pitiless. That's

the only way. This will prevent all conflagrations for the future. I was just telling the manager . . .' He noticed

my companion, and became crestfallen all at once. 'Not in bed yet,' he said, with a kind of servile heartiness;

'it's so natural. Ha! Dangeragitation.' He vanished. I went on to the riverside, and the other followed me. I

heard a scathing murmur at my ear, 'Heap of muffsgo to.' The pilgrims could be seen in knots

gesticulating, discussing. Several had still their staves in their hands. I verily believe they took these sticks to

bed with them. Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the dim stir,

through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one's very

heart, its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life. The hurt nigger moaned feebly

somewhere near by, and then fetched a deep sigh that made me mend my pace away from there. I felt a hand

introducing itself under my arm. 'My dear sir,' said the fellow, 'I don't want to be misunderstood, and

especially by you, who will see Mr. Kurtz long before I can have that pleasure. I wouldn't like him to get a

"I let him run on, this papiermache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my

forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe. He, don't you see, had

been planning to be assistantmanager byandby under the present man, and I could see that the coming of

that Kurtz had upset them both not a little. He talked precipitately, and I did not try to stop him. I had my

shoulders against the wreck of my steamer, hauled up on the slope like a carcass of some big river animal.

The smell of mud, of primeval mud, by Jove! was in my nostrils, the high stillness of primeval forest was

before my eyes; there were shiny patches on the black creek. The moon had spread over everything a thin

layer of silverover the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than

the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a somber gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed

broadly by without a murmur. All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabbered about himself. I

wondered whether the stillness on the face of the immensity looking at us two were meant as an appeal or as

a menace. What were we who had strayed in here? Could we handle that dumb thing, or would it handle us? I

felt how big, how confoundedly big, was that thing that couldn't talk, and perhaps was deaf as well. What was

in there? I could see a little ivory coming out from there, and I had heard Mr. Kurtz was in there. I had heard

enough about it tooGod knows! Yet somehow it didn't bring any image with itno more than if I had

been told an angel or a fiend was in there. I believed it in the same way one of you might believe there are

inhabitants in the planet Mars. I knew once a Scotch sailmaker who was certain, dead sure, there were people

in Mars. If you asked him for some idea how they looked and behaved, he would get shy and mutter

something about 'walking on allfours.' If you as much as smiled, he wouldthough a man of sixtyoffer

to fight you. I would not have gone so far as to fight for Kurtz, but I went for him near enough to a lie. You

know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it

appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies,which is exactly what I hate and detest in

the worldwhat I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do.

Temperament, I suppose. Well, I went near enough to it by letting the young fool there believe anything he

liked to imagine as to my influence in Europe. I became in an instant as much of a pretense as the rest of the

bewitched pilgrims. This simply because I had a notion it somehow would be of help to that Kurtz whom at

the time I did not seeyou understand. He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any

more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to

tell you a dreammaking a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dreamsensation,

that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of

". . . No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the lifesensation of any given epoch of one's existence,

that which makes its truth, its meaningits subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as

"Of course in this you fellows see more than I could then. You see me, whom you know. . . ."

It had become so pitch dark that we listeners could hardly see one another. For a long time already he, sitting

apart, had been no more to us than a voice. There was not a word from anybody. The others might have been

asleep, but I was awake. I listened, I listened on the watch for the sentence, for the word, that would give me

the clew to the faint uneasiness inspired by this narrative that seemed to shape itself without human lips in the

". . . YesI let him run on," Marlow began again, "and think what he pleased about the powers that were

behind me. I did! And there was nothing behind me! There was nothing but that wretched, old, mangled

steamboat I was leaning against, while he talked fluently about 'the necessity for every man to get on.' 'And

when one comes out here, you conceive, it is not to gaze at the moon.' Mr. Kurtz was a 'universal genius,' but

even a genius would find it easier to work with 'adequate toolsintelligent men.' He did not make

brickswhy, there was a physical impossibility in the wayas I was well aware; and if he did secretarial

work for the manager, it was because 'no sensible man rejects wantonly the confidence of his superiors.' Did I

see it? I saw it. What more did I want? What I really wanted was rivets, by heaven! Rivets. To get on with the

workto stop the hole. Rivets I wanted. There were cases of them down at the coastcasespiled

upburstsplit! You kicked a loose rivet at every second step in that station yard on the hillside. Rivets

had rolled into the grove of death. You could fill your pockets with rivets for the trouble of stooping

downand there wasn't one rivet to be found where it was wanted. We had plates that would do, but nothing

to fasten them with. And every week the messenger, a lone negro, letterbag on shoulder and staff in hand,

left our station for the coast. And several times a week a coast caravan came in with trade goods,ghastly

glazed calico that made you shudder only to look at it, glass beads value about a penny a quart, confounded

spotted cotton handkerchiefs. And no rivets. Three carriers could have brought all that was wanted to set that

"He was becoming confidential now, but I fancy my unresponsive attitude must have exasperated him at last,

for he judged it necessary to inform me he feared neither God nor devil, let alone any mere man. I said I

could see that very well, but what I wanted was a certain quantity of rivetsand rivets were what really Mr.

Kurtz wanted, if he had only known it. Now letters went to the coast every week. . . . 'My dear sir,' he cried, 'I

write from dictation.' I demanded rivets. There was a wayfor an intelligent man. He changed his manner;

became very cold, and suddenly began to talk about a hippopotamus; wondered whether sleeping on board

the steamer (I stuck to my salvage night and day) I wasn't disturbed. There was an old hippo that had the bad

habit of getting out on the bank and roaming at night over the station grounds. The pilgrims used to turn out

in a body and empty every rifle they could lay hands on at him. Some even had sat up o' nights for him. All

this energy was wasted, though. 'That animal has a charmed life,' he said; 'but you can say this only of brutes

in this country. No manyou apprehend me?no man here bears a charmed life.' He stood there for a

moment in the moonlight with his delicate hooked nose set a little askew, and his mica eyes glittering without

a wink, then, with a curt Good night, he strode off. I could see he was disturbed and considerably puzzled,

which made me feel more hopeful than I had been for days. It was a great comfort to turn from that chap to

my influential friend, the battered, twisted, ruined, tinpot steamboat. I clambered on board. She rang under

my feet like an empty Huntley & Palmer biscuittin kicked along a gutter; she was nothing so solid in make,

and rather less pretty in shape, but I had expended enough hard work on her to make me love her. No

influential friend would have served me better. She had given me a chance to come out a bit to find out

what I could do. No, I don't like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done.

I don't like workno man does but I like what is in the work,the chance to find yourself. Your own

realityfor yourself, not for others what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show,

"I was not surprised to see somebody sitting aft, on the deck, with his legs dangling over the mud. You see I

rather chummed with the few mechanics there were in that station, whom the other pilgrims naturally

despised on account of their imperfect manners, I suppose. This was the foremana boilermaker by

tradea good worker. He was a lank, bony, yellowfaced man, with big intense eyes. His aspect was

worried, and his head was as bald as the palm of my hand; but his hair in falling seemed to have stuck to his

chin, and had prospered in the new locality, for his beard hung down to his waist. He was a widower with six

young children (he had left them in charge of a sister of his to come out there), and the passion of his life was

pigeonflying. He was an enthusiast and a connoisseur. He would rave about pigeons. After work hours he

used sometimes to come over from his hut for a talk about his children and his pigeons; at work, when he had

to crawl in the mud under the bottom of the steamboat, he would tie up that beard of his in a kind of white

serviette he brought for the purpose. It had loops to go over his ears. In the evening he could be seen squatted

on the bank rinsing that wrapper in the creek with great care, then spreading it solemnly on a bush to dry.

"I slapped him on the back and shouted 'We shall have rivets!' He scrambled to his feet exclaiming 'No!

Rivets!' as though he couldn't believe his ears. Then in a low voice, 'You . . . eh?' I don't know why we

behaved like lunatics. I put my finger to the side of my nose and nodded mysteriously. 'Good for you!' he

cried, snapped his fingers above his head, lifting one foot. I tried a jig. We capered on the iron deck. A

frightful clatter came out of that hulk, and the virgin forest on the other bank of the creek sent it back in a

thundering roll upon the sleeping station. It must have made some of the pilgrims sit up in their hovels. A

dark figure obscured the lighted doorway of the manager' s hut, vanished, then, a second or so after, the

doorway itself vanished too. We stopped, and the silence driven away by the stamping of our feet flowed

back again from the recesses of the land. The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant and entangled mass of

trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless in the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of

soundless life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crested, ready to topple over the creek, to sweep every little

man of us out of his little existence. And it moved not. A deadened burst of mighty splashes and snorts

reached us from afar, as though an ichthyosaurus had been taking a bath of glitter in the great river. 'After all,'

said the boilermaker in a reasonable tone, 'why shouldn't we get the rivets?' Why not, indeed! I did not know

of any reason why we shouldn't. 'They'll come in three weeks,' I said confidently.

"But they didn't. Instead of rivets there came an invasion, an infliction, a visitation. It came in sections during

the next three weeks, each section headed by a donkey carrying a white man in new clothes and tan shoes,

bowing from that elevation right and left to the impressed pilgrims. A quarrelsome band of footsore sulky

niggers trod on the heels of the donkeys; a lot of tents, campstools, tin boxes, white cases, brown bales

would be shot down in the courtyard, and the air of mystery would deepen a little over the muddle of the

station. Five such installments came, with their absurd air of disorderly flight with the loot of innumerable

outfit shops and provision stores, that, one would think, they were lugging, after a raid, into the wilderness

for equitable division. It was an inextricable mess of things decent in themselves but that human folly made

"this devoted band called itself the Eldorado Exploring Expedition, and I believe they were sworn to secrecy.

Their talk, however, was the talk of sordid buccaneers: it was reckless without hardihood, greedy without

audacity, and cruel without courage; there was not an atom of foresight or of serious intention in the whole

batch of them, and they did not seem aware these things are wanted for the work of the world. To tear

treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there

is in burglars breaking into a safe. Who paid the expenses of the noble enterprise I don't know; but the uncle

"In exterior he resembled a butcher in a poor neighborhood, and his eyes had a look of sleepy cunning. He

carried his fat paunch with ostentation on his short legs, and during the time his gang infested the station

spoke to no one but his nephew. You could see these two roaming about all day long with their heads close

"I had given up worrying myself about the rivets. One's capacity for that kind of folly is more limited than

you would suppose. I said Hang!and let things slide. I had plenty of time for meditation, and now and then

I would give some thought to Kurtz. I wasn't very interested in him. No. Still, I was curious to see whether

this man, who had come out equipped with moral ideas of some sort, would climb to the top after all, and

"One evening as I was lying flat on the deck of my steamboat, I heard voices approachingand 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 manageror 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 weatherone manthe 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

itprime sortlotsmost 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 halfcaste 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 halfcaste 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 homeperhaps; 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

halfcaste, 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 illhad

recovered imperfectly. . . . The two below me moved away then a few paces, and strolled back and forth at

some little distance. I heard: 'Military postdoctortwo hundred miles quite alone nowunavoidable

delaysnine monthsno newsstrange rumors.' They approached again, just as the manager was saying,

'No one, as far as I know, unless a species of wandering tradera 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 climateyou 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 possible.' 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 center for trade of course, but

also for humanizing, improving, instructing." Conceive youthat 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 wereright 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 restoh, my goodness! All sick. They die so quick, too, that I haven't the

time to send them out of the countryit'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 dishonoring 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

"They swore aloud togetherout of sheer fright, I believethen 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

"In a few days the Eldorado Expedition went into the patient wilderness, that closed upon it as the sea closes

over a diver. Long afterwards the news came that all the donkeys were dead. I know nothing as to the fate of

the less valuable animals. They, no doubt, like the rest of us, found what they deserved. I did not inquire. I

was then rather excited at the prospect of meeting Kurtz very soon. When I say very soon I mean it

comparatively. It was just two months from the day we left the creek when we came to the bank below

"Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on

the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was

warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the

waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery 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

oncesome wherefar awayin 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 tinpot 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 realitythe reality, I tell youfades.

The inner truth is hiddenluckily, 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 tightropes

"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 thumpeh? A blow on the very heart.

You remember it, you dream of it, you wake up at night and think of ityears afterand 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 fellowscannibalsin their place. They were men one could work with, and I am grateful to them.

And, after all, they did not each other before my face: they had brought along a provision of hippomeat 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 stavesall 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

tumbledown 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 whileand 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 sternwheel. 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 onwhich 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 toward

Kurtzexclusively; but when the steampipes 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 woodcutters 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 grassroofs, 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 uswho

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 traveling in the

night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a signand no memories.

"The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but

therethere 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 itthis 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 humanitylike yoursthe 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 agescould

comprehend. And why not? The mind of man is capable of anythingbecause everything is in it, all the past

as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valor, ragewho can tell?

but truthtruth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudderthe 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 stuffwith his own inborn strength. Principles? Principles won't do. Acquisitions,

clothes, pretty ragsrags that would fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief. An

appeal to me in this fiendish rowis 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, noI

didn't. Fine sentiments, you say? Fine sentiments, be hanged! I had no time. I had to mess about with

whitelead and strips of woolen blanket helping to put bandages on those leaky steampipesI tell you. I

had to watch the steering, and circumvent those snags, and get the tinpot along by hook or by crook. There

was surfacetruth 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 steamgauge and at the watergauge with an evident effort of intrepidityand 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 thisthat should the water in that transparent thing

disappear, the evil spirit inside the boiler would get angry through the greatness of his thirst, and take a

terrible vengeance. So he sweated and fired up and watched the glass fearfully (with an impromptu charm,

made of rags, tied to his arm, and a piece of polished bone, as big as a watch, stuck flatways through his

lower lip), while the wooded banks slipped past us slowly, the short noise was left behind, the interminable

miles of silenceand 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

"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 pencilwriting on it. When deciphered it said: 'Wood for you. Hurry up. Approach

cautiously.' There was a signature, but it was illegiblenot 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 whatand 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 Tower, Towsonsome such nameMaster 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 penciled 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 notesin cipher at that! It was an extravagant

"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

"I started the lame engine ahead. 'It must be this miserable traderthis 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

"The current was more rapid now, the steamer seemed at her last gasp, the sternwheel flopped languidly,

and I caught myself listening on tiptoe for the next beat of the float, 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 anyone

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 sleepit 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 deafthen 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 stilland 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 clamor, 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 openmouthed 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 herand that was all. The

rest of the world was nowhere, as far as our eyes and ears were concerned. Just nowhere. Gone, disappeared;

"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 all be 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, broadchested black, severely draped in darkblue 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 timehad 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

hippomeat, 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 highhanded

proceeding; but it was really a case of legitimate selfdefense. 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 hegoat 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 honorable

trading company. For the rest, the only thing to eatthough it didn't look eatable in the leastI saw in their

possession was a few lumps of some stuff like halfcooked dough, of a dirty lavender color, 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 usthey were thirty to fiveand 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 interestnot because it occurred to me I might be eaten by

them before very long, though I own to you that just then I perceivedin a new light, as it were how

unwholesome the pilgrims looked, and I hoped, yes, I positively hoped, that my aspect was not sowhat

shall I say?sounappetizing: a touch of fantastic vanity which fitted well with the dreamsensation 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 thingsthe playful

pawstrokes 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, fearor some kind of primitive honor? 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 somber 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, dishonor,

and the perdition of one's soulthan 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 methe fact dazzling, to be seen,

like the foam on the depths of the sea, like a ripple on an unfathomable enigma, a mystery greaterwhen I

thought of itthan the curious, inexplicable note of desperate grief in this savage clamor that had swept by

"Two pilgrims were quarreling 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

airin space. We wouldn't be able to tell where we were going towhether 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 smashup. You couldn't imagine a more deadly place for a shipwreck.

Whether 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 impenetrableand 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 reachcertainly not abreast of the steamer. But what made

the idea of attack inconceivable to me was the nature of the noiseof the cries we had heard. They had not

the fierce character boding of 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 violencebut more generally

"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 madwith 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 cottonwool. It felt like it toochoking, 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 aggressiveit 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 sandbank, or rather

of a chain of shallow patches stretching down the middle of the river. They were discolored, 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 upvery slowly, as you may imagine. I sheered her well inshorethe water being

"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 foreend, 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 pilothouse. It contained a couch, two campstools, a loaded MartiniHenry

leaning in one corner, a tiny table, and the steeringwheel. 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

foreend 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

"I was looking down at the soundingpole, 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 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 pilothouse. All this time the river, the shore, the woods, were very

quiet perfectly quiet. I could only hear the heavy splashing thump of the sternwheel 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 land side. That foolhelmsman, his hands on the spokes, was lifting his knees high,

stamping his feet, champing his mouth, like a reinedin 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 color. 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 shape of a Vshaped 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 woodcutters raised a warlike whoop; the report of a rifle just at my back

deafened me. I glanced over my shoulder, and the pilothouse was yet full of noise and smoke when I made a

dash at the wheel. The foolnigger had dropped everything, to throw the shutter open and let off that

MartiniHenry. 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

"We tore slowly along the overhanging bushes in a whirl of broken twigs 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 pilothouse, in at one shutterhole 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 campstool. 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 darkred under the wheel; his eyes shone with an amazing luster. 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 steamwhistled, 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 sharplythen silence, in which the languid beat of

the sternwheel came plainly to my ears. I put the helm hard astarboard 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 question 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 deathmask an inconceivably somber, brooding, and menacing expression. The luster

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 shoelaces. 'And, by the way, I

"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 traveled 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 toa

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 wordsthe gift of expression, the

bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible, the pulsating stream of light, or

"The other shoe went flying unto the devilgod of that river. I thought, By Jove! it's all over. We are too late;

he has vanishedthe 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 the tiny flame. The

"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 normalyou hearnormal from year's end to year's end. And you say, Absurd!

Absurd beexploded! 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

heardhimitthis voiceother voicesall of them were so little more than voicesand 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, voiceseven the girl

"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 itcompletely. Theythe women I meanare out of itshould 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 thisah 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, andlo!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 favorite. 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 sometimesbut 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 favor 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 himbut 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

impossibleit was not good for one eithertrying to imagine. He had taken a high seat amongst the devils

of the landI mean literally. You can't understand. How could you?with solid pavement under your feet,

surrounded by kind neighbors 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 untrammeled feet may take him into by the way of

solitudeutter solitude without a policeman by the way of silence, utter silence, where no warning voice

of a kind neighbor 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 wrongtoo 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 devilI 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,

backbreaking business. And that's difficult enough. Mind, I am not trying to excuse or even explain I am

trying to account to myself forforMr. Kurtzfor the shade of Mr. Kurtz. This initiated wraith from the

back of Nowhere honored 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, andas he was good

enough to say himselfhis sympathies were in the right place. His mother was halfEnglish, his father was

halfFrench. All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz; and byandby 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 highstrung, I think. Seventeen pages of close writing he had found time

for! But this must have been before hislet us saynerves, went wrong, and caused him to preside at

certain midnight dances ending with unspeakable rites, whichas far as I reluctantly gathered from what I

heard at various timeswere offered up to himdo 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 beingswe approach them with the

might as 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,' &c., &c. 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 wordsof 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

dustbin 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 witchdance in his honor; 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 selfseeking. 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 pilothouse.

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 backa helpan instrument. It was a kind of partnership. He steered for meI 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 memorylike 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 restraintjust like Kurtza 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

awningdeck about the pilothouse, 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 woodcutters were likewise scandalized, and with a better show of reasonthough 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 secondrate helmsman while alive, but now

he was dead he might have become a firstclass 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

"This I did directly the simple funeral was over. We were going halfspeed, 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 burntand so onand so on. The redhaired pilgrim was beside himself

with the thought that at least this poor Kurtz had been properly revenged. '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 rightwas

caused by the screeching of the steamwhistle. Upon this they forgot Kurtz, and began to howl at me with

"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

"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 inclosure or

fence of any kind; but there had been one apparently, for near the house halfadozen 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 riverbank

was clear, and on the waterside I saw a white man under a hat like a cartwheel 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 knowI know. It's all right,' yelled back the other, as cheerful as you please. 'Come along.

"His aspect reminded me of something I had seen something funny I had seen somewhere. As I

maneuvered 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

front, patches on elbows, on knees; colored binding round 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 windswept 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

"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 pilothouse 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 manyou

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 . . . honor . . . pleasure .

. . delight . . . introduce myself . . . Russian . . . son of an archpriest . . . Government of Tambov . . . What?

Tobacco! English tobacco; the excellent English tobacco! Now, that's brotherly. Smoke? Where's a sailor that

"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 archpriest. 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 have met Mr. Kurtz,' he said, youthfully solemn and reproachful. I

held my tongue after that. It appears he had persuaded a Dutch tradinghouse 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 twentyfive,' 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 hindleg off his favorite 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."

"I looked at him, lost in astonishment. There he was before me, in motley, as though he had absconded from a

troupe of mimes, enthusiastic, fabulous. His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether

bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded

in getting so far, how he had managed to remain why he did not instantly disappear. 'I went a little farther,'

he said, 'then still a little farthertill I had gone so far that I don't know how I'll ever get back. Never mind.

Plenty time. I can manage. You take Kurtz away quickquickI tell you.' The glamour of youth enveloped

his particolored rags, his destitution, his loneliness, the essential desolation of his futile wanderings. For

monthsfor yearshis life hadn't been worth a day's purchase; and there he was gallantly, thoughtlessly

alive, to all appearance indestructible solely by the virtue of his few years and of his unreflecting audacity. I

was seduced into something like admiration like envy. Glamour urged him on, glamour kept him

unscathed. He surely wanted nothing from the wilderness but space to breathe in and to push on through. His

need was to exist, and to move onwards at the greatest possible risk, and with a maximum of privation. If the

absolutely pure, uncalculating, unpractical spirit of adventure had ever ruled a human being, it ruled this

bepatched youth. I almost envied him the possession of this modest and clear flame. It seemed to have

consumed all thought of self so completely, that, even while he was talking to you, you forgot that it was

hethe man before your eyeswho had gone through these things. I did not envy him his devotion to

Kurtz, though. He had not meditated over it. It came to him, and he accepted it with a sort of eager fatalism. I

must say that to me it appeared about the most dangerous thing in every way he had come upon so far.

"They had come together unavoidably, like two ships becalmed near each other, and lay rubbing sides at last.

I suppose Kurtz wanted an audience, because on a certain occasion, when encamped in the forest, they had

talked all night, or more probably Kurtz had talked. 'We talked of everything,' he said, quite transported at the

recollection. 'I forgot there was such a thing as sleep. The night did not seem to last an hour. Everything !

Everything! . . . Of love too.' 'Ah, he talked to you of love!' I said, much amused. 'It isn't what you think,' he

"He threw his arms up. We were on deck at the time, and the headman of my woodcutters, lounging near by,

turned upon him his heavy and glittering eyes. I looked around, and I don't know why, but I assure you that

never, never before, did this land, this river, this jungle, the very arch of this blazing sky, appear to me so

hopeless and so dark, so impenetrable to human thought, so pitiless to human weakness. 'And, ever since, you

"On the contrary. It appears their intercourse had been very much broken by various causes. He had, as he

informed me proudly, managed to nurse Kurtz through two illnesses (he alluded to it as you would to some

risky feat), but as a rule Kurtz wandered alone, far in the depths of the forest. 'Very often coming to this

station, I had to wait days and days before he would turn up,' he said. 'Ah, it was worth waiting for!

sometimes.' 'What was he doing? exploring or what?' I asked. 'Oh yes, of course;' he had discovered lots of

villages, a lake toohe did not know exactly in what direction; it was dangerous to inquire too muchbut

mostly his expeditions had been for ivory. 'But he had no goods to trade with by that time,' I objected.

'There's a good lot of cartridges left even yet,' he answered, looking away. 'To speak plainly, he raided the

country,' I said. He nodded. 'Not alone, surely!' He muttered something about the villages round that lake.

'Kurtz got the tribe to follow him, did he?' I suggested. He fidgeted a little. 'They adored him,' he said. The

tone of these words was so extraordinary that I looked at him searchingly. It was curious to see his mingled

eagerness and reluctance to speak of Kurtz. The man filled his life, occupied his thoughts, swayed his

emotions. 'What can you expect?' he burst out; 'he came to them with thunder and lightning, you knowand

they had never seen anything like itand very terrible. He could be very terrible. You can't judge Mr. Kurtz

as you would an ordinary man. No, no, no! Nowjust to give you an ideaI don't mind telling you, he

wanted to shoot me too one daybut I don't judge him.' 'Shoot you!' I cried. 'What for?' 'Well, I had a small

lot of ivory the chief of that village near my house gave me. You see I used to shoot game for them. Well, he

wanted it, and wouldn't hear reason. He declared he would shoot me unless I gave him the ivory and then

cleared out of the country, because he could do so, and had a fancy for it, and there was nothing on earth to

prevent him killing whom he jolly well pleased. And it was true too. I gave him the ivory. What did I care!

But I didn't clear out. No, no. I couldn't leave him. I had to be careful, of course, till we got friendly again for

a time. He had his second illness then. Afterwards I had to keep out of the way; but I didn't mind. He was

living for the most part in those villages on the lake. When he came down to the river, sometimes he would

take to me, and sometimes it was better for me to be careful. This man suffered too much. He hated all this,

and somehow he couldn't get away. When I had a chance I begged him to try and leave while there was time;

I offered to go back with him. And he would say yes, and then he would remain; go off on another ivory

hunt; disappear for weeks; forget himself amongst these peopleforget himselfyou know.' 'Why! he's

mad,' I said. He protested indignantly. Mr. Kurtz couldn't be mad. If I had heard him talk, only two days ago,

I wouldn't dare hint at such a thing. . . . I had taken up my binoculars while we talked and was looking at the

shore, sweeping the limit of the forest at each side and at the back of the house. The consciousness of there

being people in that bush, so silent, so quietas silent and quiet as the ruined house on the hillmade me

uneasy. There was no sign on the face of nature of this amazing tale that was not so much told as suggested to

me in desolate exclamations, completed by shrugs, in interrupted phrases, in hints ending in deep sighs. The

woods were unmoved, like a mask heavy, like the closed door of a prisonthey looked with their air of

hidden knowledge, of patient expectation, of unapproachable silence. The Russian was explaining to me that

it was only lately that Mr. Kurtz had come down to the river, bringing along with him all the fighting men of

that lake tribe. He had been absent for several monthsgetting himself adored, I supposeand had come

down unexpectedly, with the intention to all appearance of making a raid either across the river or down

stream. Evidently the appetite for more ivory had got the better of thewhat shall I say?less material

aspirations. However he had got much worse suddenly. 'I heard he was lying helpless, and so I came

uptook my chance,' said the Russian. 'Oh, he is bad, very bad.' I directed my glass to the house. There were

no signs of life, but there was the ruined roof, the long mud wall peeping above the grass, with three little

square windowholes, no two of the same size; all this brought within reach of my hand, as it were. And then

I made a brusque movement, and one of the remaining posts of that vanished fence leaped up in the field of

my glass. You remember I told you I had been struck at the distance by certain attempts at ornamentation,

rather remarkable in the ruinous aspect of the place. Now I had suddenly a nearer view, and its first result was

to make me throw my head back as if before a blow. Then I went carefully from post to post with my glass,

and I saw my mistake. These round knobs were not ornamental but symbolic; they were expressive and

puzzling, striking and disturbingfood for thought and also for the vultures if there had been any looking

down from the sky; but at all events for such ants as were industrious enough to ascend the pole. They would

have been even more impressive, those heads on the stakes, if their faces had not been turned to the house.

Only one, the first I had made out, was facing my way. I was not so shocked as you may think. The start back

I had given was really nothing but a movement of surprise. I had expected to see a knob of wood there, you

know. I returned deliberately to the first I had seen and there it was, black, dried, sunken, with closed

eyelids, a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and, with the shrunken dry lips showing a

narrow white line of the teeth, was smiling too, smiling continuously at some endless and jocose dream of

"I am not disclosing any trade secrets. In fact the manager said afterwards that Mr. Kurtz's methods had

ruined the district. I have no opinion on that point, but I want you clearly to understand that there was nothing

exactly profitable in these heads being there. They only showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the

gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in himsome small matter which, when

the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this

deficiency himself I can't say. I think the knowledge came to him at lastonly at the very last. But the

wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I

think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no

conception till he took counsel with this great solitudeand the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating.

It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core. . . . I put down the glass, and the head that had

appeared near enough to be spoken to seemed at once to have leaped away from me into inaccessible

"The admirer of Mr. Kurtz was a bit crestfallen. In a hurried, indistinct voice he began to assure me he had

not dared to take thesesay, symbolsdown. He was not afraid of the natives; they would not stir till Mr.

Kurtz gave the word. His ascendency was extraordinary. The camps of these people surrounded the place,

and the chiefs came every day to see him. They would crawl. . . . 'I don't want to know anything of the

ceremonies used when approaching Mr. Kurtz,' I shouted. Curious, this feeling that came over me that such

details would be more intolerable than those heads drying on the stakes under Mr. Kurtz's windows. After all,

that was only a savage sight, while I seemed at one bound to have been transported into some lightless region

of subtle horrors, where pure, uncomplicated savagery was a positive relief, being something that had a right

to existobviouslyin the sunshine. The young man looked at me with surprise. I suppose it did not occur

to him Mr. Kurtz was no idol of mine. He forgot I hadn't heard any of these splendid monologues on, what

was it? on love, justice, conduct of life or what not. If it had come to crawling before Mr. Kurtz, he

crawled as much as the veriest savage of them all. I had no idea of the conditions, he said: these heads were

the heads of rebels. I shocked him excessively by laughing. Rebels! What would be the next definition I was

to hear? There had been enemies, criminals, workers and these were rebels. Those rebellious heads looked

very subdued to me on their sticks. 'You don't know how such a life tries a man like Kurtz,' cried Kurtz's last

disciple. 'Well, and you?' I said. 'I! I! I am a simple man. I have no great thoughts. I want nothing from

anybody. How can you compare me to . . .?" His feelings were too much for speech, and suddenly he broke

down. 'I don't understand,' he groaned. 'I've been doing my best to keep him alive, and that's enough. I had no

hand in all this. I have no abilities. There hasn't been a drop of medicine or a mouthful of invalid food for

months here. He was shamefully abandoned. A man like this, with such ideas. Shamefully! Shamefully!

"His voice lost itself in the calm of the evening. The long shadows of the forest had slipped down hill while

we talked, had gone far beyond the ruined hovel, beyond the symbolic row of stakes. All this was in the

gloom, while we down there were yet in the sunshine, and the stretch of the river abreast of the clearing

glittered in a still and dazzling splendor, with a murky and overshadowed bend above and below. Not a

"Suddenly round the corner of the house a group of men appeared, as though they had come up from the

ground. They waded waistdeep in the grass, in a compact body, bearing an improvised stretcher in their

midst. Instantly, in the emptiness of the landscape, a cry arose whose shrillness pierced the still air like a

sharp arrow flying straight to the very heart of the land; and, as if by enchantment, streams of human

beingsof naked human beingswith spears in their hands, with bows, with shields, with wild glances and

savage movements, were poured into the clearing by the darkfaced and pensive forest. The bushes shook,

the grass swayed for a time, and then everything stood still in attentive immobility.

"'Now, if he does not say the right thing to them we are all done for,' said the Russian at my elbow. The knot

of men with the stretcher had stopped too, halfway to the steamer, as if petrified. I saw the man on the

stretcher sit up, lank and with an uplifted arm, above the shoulders of the bearers. 'Let us hope that the man

who can talk so well of love in general will find some particular reason to spare us this time,' I said. I resented

bitterly the absurd danger of our situation, as if to be at the mercy of that atrocious phantom had been a

dishonoring necessity. I could not hear a sound, but through my glasses I saw the thin arm extended

commandingly, the lower jaw moving, the eyes of that apparition shining darkly far in its bony head that

nodded with grotesque jerks. KurtzKurtzthat means short in Germandon't it? Well, the name was as

true as everything else in his lifeand death. He looked at least seven feet long. His covering had fallen off,

and his body emerged from it pitiful and appalling as from a windingsheet. I could see the cage of his ribs

all astir, the bones of his arm waving. It was as though an animated image of death carved out of old ivory

had been shaking its hand with menaces at a motionless crowd of men made of dark and glittering bronze. I

saw him open his mouth wideit gave him a weirdly voracious aspect, as though he had wanted to swallow

all the air, all the earth, all the men before him. A deep voice reached me faintly. He must have been

shouting. He fell back suddenly. The stretcher shook as the bearers staggered forward again, and almost at the

same time I noticed that the crowd of savages was vanishing without any perceptible movement of retreat, as

if the forest that had ejected these beings so suddenly had drawn them in again as the breath is drawn in a

"Some of the pilgrims behind the stretcher carried his armstwo shotguns, a heavy rifle, and a light

revolvercarbine the thunderbolts of that pitiful Jupiter. The manager bent over him murmuring as he

walked beside his head. They laid him down in one of the little cabins just a room for a bedplace and a

campstool or two, you know. We had brought his belated correspondence, and a lot of torn envelopes and

open letters littered his bed. His hand roamed feebly amongst these papers. I was struck by the fire of his eyes

and the composed languor of his expression. It was not so much the exhaustion of disease. He did not seem in

pain. This shadow looked satiated and calm, as though for the moment it had had its fill of all the emotions.

"He rustled one of the letters, and looking straight in my face said, 'I am glad.' Somebody had been writing to

him about me. These special recommendations were turning up again. The volume of tone he emitted without

effort, almost without the trouble of moving his lips, amazed me. A voice! a voice! It was grave, profound,

vibrating, while the man did not seem capable of a whisper. However, he had enough strength in

himfactitious no doubtto very nearly make an end of us, as you shall hear directly.

"The manager appeared silently in the doorway; I stepped out at once and he drew the curtain after me. The

Russian, eyed curiously by the pilgrims, was staring at the shore. I followed the direction of his glance.

"Dark human shapes could be made out in the distance, flitting indistinctly against the gloomy border of the

forest, and near the river two bronze figures, leaning on tall spears, stood in the sunlight under fantastic

headdresses of spotted skins, warlike and still in statuesque repose. And from right to left along the lighted

"She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths, treading the earth proudly, with a

slight jingle and flash of barbarous ornaments. She carried her head high; her hair was done in the shape of a

helmet; she had brass leggings to the knee, brass wire gauntlets to the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny

cheek, innumerable necklaces of glass beads on her neck; bizarre things, charms, gifts of witchmen, that

hung about her, glittered and trembled at every step. She must have had the value of several elephant tusks

upon her. She was savage and superb, wildeyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately

in her deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the

immense wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her, pensive, as

though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul.

"She came abreast of the steamer, stood still, and faced us. Her long shadow fell to the water's edge. Her face

had a tragic and fierce aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb pain mingled with the fear of some struggling,

halfshaped resolve. She stood looking at us without a stir and like the wilderness itself, with an air of

brooding over an inscrutable purpose. A whole minute passed, and then she made a step forward. There was a

low jingle, a glint of yellow metal, a sway of fringed draperies, and she stopped as if her heart had failed her.

The young fellow by my side growled. The pilgrims murmured at my back. She looked at us all as if her life

had depended upon the unswerving steadiness of her glance. Suddenly she opened her bared arms and threw

them up rigid above her head, as though in an uncontrollable desire to touch the sky, and at the same time the

swift shadows darted out on the earth, swept around on the river, gathering the steamer into a shadowy

"She turned away slowly, walked on, following the bank, and passed into the bushes to the left. Once only

"'If she had offered to come aboard I really think I would have tried to shoot her,' said the man of patches,

nervously. 'I had been risking my life every day for the last fortnight to keep her out of the house. She got in

one day and kicked up a row about those miserable rags I picked up in the storeroom to mend my clothes

with. I wasn't decent. At least it must have been that, for she talked like a fury to Kurtz for an hour, pointing

at me now and then. I don't understand the dialect of this tribe. Luckily for me, I fancy Kurtz felt too ill that

day to care, or there would have been mischief. I don't understand. . . . Noit's too much for me. Ah, well,

"At this moment I heard Kurtz's deep voice behind the curtain, 'Save me!save the ivory, you mean. Don't

tell me. Save ME! Why, I've had to save you. You are interrupting my plans now. Sick! Sick! Not so sick as

you would like to believe. Never mind. I'll carry my ideas out yetI will return. I'll show you what can be

done. You with your little peddling notions you are interfering with me. I will return. I . . .'

"The manager came out. He did me the honor to take me under the arm and lead me aside. 'He is very low,

very low,' he said. He considered it necessary to sigh, but neglected to be consistently sorrowful. 'We have

done all we could for himhaven't we? But there is no disguising the fact, Mr. Kurtz has done more harm

than good to the Company. He did not see the time was not ripe for vigorous action. Cautiously, cautiously

that's my principle. We must be cautious yet. The district is closed to us for a time. Deplorable! Upon the

whole, the trade will suffer. I don't deny there is a remarkable quantity of ivorymostly fossil. We must save

it, at all eventsbut look how precarious the position isand why? Because the method is unsound.' 'Do

you,' said I, looking at the shore, 'call it "unsound method"?' 'Without doubt,' he exclaimed, hotly. 'Don't

you?' . . . 'No method at all,' I murmured after a while. 'Exactly,' he exulted. 'I anticipated this. Shows a

complete want of judgment. It is my duty to point it out in the proper quarter.' 'Oh,' said I, 'that

fellowwhat's his name?the brickmaker, will make a readable report for you.' He appeared confounded

for a moment. It seemed to me I had never breathed an atmosphere so vile, and I turned mentally to Kurtz for

reliefpositively for relief. 'Nevertheless I think Mr. Kurtz is a remarkable man,' I said with emphasis. He

started, dropped on me a cold heavy glance, said very quietly, 'He WAS,' and turned his back on me. My hour

of favor was over; I found myself lumped along with Kurtz as a partisan of methods for which the time was

not ripe: I was unsound! Ah! but it was something to have at least a choice of nightmares.

"I had turned to the wilderness really, not to Mr. Kurtz, who, I was ready to admit, was as good as buried.

And for a moment it seemed to me as if I also were buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets. I felt an

intolerable weight oppressing my breast, the smell of the damp earth, the unseen presence of victorious

corruption, the darkness of an impenetrable night. . . . The Russian tapped me on the shoulder. I heard him

mumbling and stammering something about 'brother seamancouldn't concealknowledge of matters that

would affect Mr. Kurtz's reputation.' I waited. For him evidently Mr. Kurtz was not in his grave; I suspect

that for him Mr. Kurtz was one of the immortals. 'Well!' said I at last, 'speak out. As it happens, I am Mr.

"He stated with a good deal of formality that had we not been 'of the same profession,' he would have kept

the matter to himself without regard to consequences. 'He suspected there was an active illwill towards him

on the part of these white men that' 'You are right,' I said, remembering a certain conversation I had

overheard. 'The manager thinks you ought to be hanged.' He showed a concern at this intelligence which

amused me at first. 'I had better get out of the way quietly,' he said, earnestly. 'I can do no more for Kurtz

now, and they would soon find some excuse. What's to stop them? There's a military post three hundred miles

from here.' 'Well, upon my word,' said I, 'perhaps you had better go if you have any friends amongst the

savages near by.' 'Plenty,' he said. 'They are simple peopleand I want nothing, you know.' He stood biting

his lips, then: 'I don't want any harm to happen to these whites here, but of course I was thinking of Mr.

Kurtz's reputationbut you are a brother seaman and' 'All right,' said I, after a time. 'Mr. Kurtz's

"He informed me, lowering his voice, that it was Kurtz who had ordered the attack to be made on the

steamer. 'He hated sometimes the idea of being taken awayand then again. . . . But I don't understand these

matters. I am a simple man. He thought it would scare you awaythat you would give it up, thinking him

dead. I could not stop him. Oh, I had an awful time of it this last month.' 'Very well,' I said. 'He is all right

now.' 'Yeees,' he muttered, not very convinced apparently. 'Thanks,' said I; 'I shall keep my eyes open.'

'But quieteh?' he urged, anxiously. 'It would be awful for his reputation if anybody here' I promised a

complete discretion with great gravity. 'I have a canoe and three black fellows waiting not very far. I am off.

Could you give me a few MartiniHenry cartridges?' I could, and did, with proper secrecy. He helped

himself, with a wink at me, to a handful of my tobacco. 'Between sailorsyou knowgood English

tobacco.' At the door of the pilothouse he turned round 'I say, haven't you a pair of shoes you could

spare?' He raised one leg. 'Look.' The soles were tied with knotted strings sandalwise under his bare feet. I

rooted out an old pair, at which he looked with admiration before tucking it under his left arm. One of his

pockets (bright red) was bulging with cartridges, from the other (dark blue) peeped 'Towson's Inquiry,' &c.,

&c. He seemed to think himself excellently well equipped for a renewed encounter with the wilderness. 'Ah!

I'll never, never meet such a man again. You ought to have heard him recite poetryhis own too it was, he

told me. Poetry!' He rolled his eyes at the recollection of these delights. 'Oh, he enlarged my mind!' 'Goodby,'

said I. He shook hands and vanished in the night. Sometimes I ask myself whether I had ever really seen

"When I woke up shortly after midnight his warning came to my mind with its hint of danger that seemed, in

the starred darkness, real enough to make me get up for the purpose of having a look round. On the hill a big

fire burned, illuminating fitfully a crooked corner of the stationhouse. One of the agents with a picket of a

few of our blacks, armed for the purpose, was keeping guard over the ivory; but deep within the forest, red

gleams that wavered, that seemed to sink and rise from the ground amongst confused columnar shapes of

intense blackness, showed the exact position of the camp where Mr. Kurtz's adorers were keeping their

uneasy vigil. The monotonous beating of a big drum filled the air with muffled shocks and a lingering

vibration. A steady droning sound of many men chanting each to himself some weird incantation came out

from the black, flat wall of the woods as the humming of bees comes out of a hive, and had a strange narcotic

effect upon my halfawake senses. I believe I dozed off leaning over the rail, till an abrupt burst of yells, an

overwhelming outbreak of a pentup and mysterious frenzy, woke me up in a bewildered wonder. It was cut

short all at once, and the low droning went on with an effect of audible and soothing silence. I glanced

casually into the little cabin. A light was burning within, but Mr. Kurtz was not there.

"I think I would have raised an outcry if I had believed my eyes. But I didn't believe them at firstthe thing

seemed so impossible. The fact is I was completely unnerved by a sheer blank fright, pure abstract terror,

unconnected with any distinct shape of physical danger. What made this emotion so overpowering

washow shall I define it?the moral shock I received, as if something altogether monstrous, intolerable to

thought and odious to the soul, had been thrust upon me unexpectedly. This lasted of course the merest

fraction of a second, and then the usual sense of commonplace, deadly danger, the possibility of a sudden

onslaught and massacre, or something of the kind, which I saw impending, was positively welcome and

"There was an agent buttoned up inside an ulster and sleeping on a chair on deck within three feet of e. The

yells had not awakened him; he snored very slightly; I left him to his slumbers and leaped ashore. I did not

betray Mr. Kurtzit was ordered I should never betray himit was written I should be loyal to the

nightmare of my choice. I was anxious to deal with this shadow by myself alone,and to this day I don't

know why I was so jealous of sharing with anyone the peculiar blackness of that experience.

"As soon as I got on the bank I saw a traila broad trail through the grass. I remember the exultation with

which I said to myself, 'He can't walkhe is crawling on allfoursI've got him.' The grass was wet with

dew. I strode rapidly with clenched fists. I fancy I had some vague notion of falling upon him and giving him

a drubbing. I don't know. I had some imbecile thoughts. The knitting old woman with the cat obtruded herself

upon my memory as a most improper person to be sitting at the other end of such an affair. I saw a row of

pilgrims squirting lead in the air out of Winchesters held to the hip. I thought I would never get back to the

steamer, and imagined myself living alone and unarmed in the woods to an advanced age. Such silly

thingsyou know. And I remember I confounded the beat of the drum with the beating of my heart, and was

"I kept to the track thoughthen stopped to listen. The night was very clear: a dark blue space, sparkling

with dew and starlight, in which black things stood very still. I thought I could see a kind of motion ahead of

me. I was strangely cocksure of everything that night. I actually left the track and ran in a wide semicircle (I

verily believe chuckling to myself) so as to get in front of that stir, of that motion I had seen if indeed I had

"I came upon him, and, if he had not heard me coming, I would have fallen over him too, but he got up in

time. He rose, unsteady, long, pale, indistinct, like a vapor exhaled by the earth, and swayed slightly, misty

and silent before me; while at my back the fires loomed between the trees, and the murmur of many voices

issued from the forest. I had cut him off cleverly; but when actually confronting him I seemed to come to my

senses, I saw the danger in its right proportion. It was by no means over yet. Suppose he began to shout?

Though he could hardly stand, there was still plenty of vigor in his voice. 'Go awayhide yourself,' he said,

in that profound tone. It was very awful. I glanced back. We were within thirty yards from the nearest fire. A

black figure stood up, strode on long black legs, waving long black arms, across the glow. It had

hornsantelope horns, I thinkon its head. Some sorcerer, some witchman, no doubt: it looked fiendlike

enough. 'Do you know what you are doing?' I whispered. 'Perfectly,' he answered, raising his voice for that

single word: it sounded to me far off and yet loud, like a hail through a speakingtrumpet. If he makes a row

we are lost, I thought to myself. This clearly was not a case for fisticuffs, even apart from the very natural

aversion I had to beat that Shadowthis wandering and tormented thing. 'You will be lost,' I said'utterly

lost.' One gets sometimes such a flash of inspiration, you know. I did say the right thing, though indeed he

could not have been more irretrievably lost than he was at this very moment, when the foundations of our

"'I had immense plans,' he muttered irresolutely. 'Yes,' said I; 'but if you try to shout I'll smash your head

with' there was not a stick or a stone near. 'I will throttle you for good,' I corrected myself. 'I was on the

threshold of great things,' he pleaded, in a voice of longing, with a wistfulness of tone that made my blood

run cold. 'And now for this stupid scoundrel' 'Your success in Europe is assured in any case,' I affirmed,

steadily. I did not want to have the throttling of him, you understandand indeed it would have been very

little use for any practical purpose. I tried to break the spellthe heavy, mute spell of the wilderness that

seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of

gratified and monstrous passions. This alone, I was convinced, had driven him out to the edge of the forest, to

the bush, towards the gleam of fires, the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations; this alone had

beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations. And, don't you see, the terror of the

position was not in being knocked on the head though I had a very lively sense of that danger too but in

this, that I had to deal with a being to whom I could not appeal in the name of anything high or low. I had,

even like the niggers, to invoke himhimself his own exalted and incredible degradation. There was

nothing either above or below him, and I knew it. He had kicked himself loose of the earth. Confound the

man! he had kicked the very earth to pieces. He was alone, and I before him did not know whether I stood on

the ground or floated in the air. I've been telling you what we saidrepeating the phrases we pronounced,

but what's the good? They were common everyday words,the familiar, vague sounds exchanged on

every waking day of life. But what of that? They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of

words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares. Soul! If anybody had ever struggled with a soul, I

am the man. And I wasn't arguing with a lunatic either. Believe me or not, his intelligence was perfectly

clearconcentrated, it is true, upon himself with horrible intensity, yet clear; and therein was my only

chancebarring, of course, the killing him there and then, which wasn't so good, on account of unavoidable

noise. But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens! I tell

you, it had gone mad. I hadfor my sins, I suppose to go through the ordeal of looking into it myself. No

eloquence could have been so withering to one's belief in mankind as his final burst of sincerity. He struggled

with himself, too. I saw it,I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no

faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself. I kept my head pretty well; but when I had him at last

stretched on the couch, I wiped my forehead, while my legs shook under me as though I had carried half a ton

on my back down that hill. And yet I had only supported him, his bony arm clasped round my neck and he

"When next day we left at noon, the crowd, of whose presence behind the curtain of trees I had been acutely

conscious all the time, flowed out of the woods again, filled the clearing, covered the slope with a mass of

naked, breathing, quivering, bronze bodies. I steamed up a bit, then swung downstream, and two thousand

eyes followed the evolutions of the splashing, thumping, fierce riverdemon beating the water with its

terrible tail and breathing black smoke into the air. In front of the first rank, along the river, three men,

plastered with bright red earth from head to foot, strutted to and fro restlessly. When we came abreast again,

they faced the river, stamped their feet, nodded their horned heads, swayed their scarlet bodies; they shook

towards the fierce riverdemon a bunch of black feathers, a mangy skin with a pendent tailsomething that

looked like a dried gourd; they shouted periodically together strings of amazing words that resembled no

sounds of human language; and the deep murmurs of the crowd, interrupted suddenly, were like the response

"We had carried Kurtz into the pilothouse: there was more air there. Lying on the couch, he stared through

the open shutter. There was an eddy in the mass of human bodies, and the woman with helmeted head and

tawny cheeks rushed out to the very brink of the stream. She put out her hands, shouted something, and all

that wild mob took up the shout in a roaring chorus of articulated, rapid, breathless utterance.

"He kept on looking out past me with fiery, longing eyes, with a mingled expression of wistfulness and hate.

He made no answer, but I saw a smile, a smile of indefinable meaning, appear on his colorless lips that a

moment after twitched convulsively. 'Do I not?' he said slowly, gasping, as if the words had been torn out of

"I pulled the string of the whistle, and I did this because I saw the pilgrims on deck getting out their rifles

with an air of anticipating a jolly lark. At the sudden screech there was a movement of abject terror through

that wedged mass of bodies. 'Don't! don't! you frighten them away,' cried someone on deck disconsolately. I

pulled the string time after time. They broke and ran, they leaped, they crouched, they swerved, they dodged

the flying terror of the sound. The three red chaps had fallen flat, face down on the shore, as though they had

been shot dead. Only the barbarous and superb woman did not so much as flinch, and stretched tragically her

"And then that imbecile crowd down on the deck started their little fun, and I could see nothing more for

"The brown current ran swiftly out of the heart of darkness, bearing us down towards the sea with twice the

speed of our upward progress; and Kurtz's life was running swiftly too, ebbing, ebbing out of his heart into

the sea of inexorable time. The manager was very placid, he had no vital anxieties now, he took us both in

with a comprehensive and satisfied glance: the 'affair' had come off as well as could be wished. I saw the time

approaching when I would be left alone of the party of 'unsound method.' The pilgrims looked upon me with

disfavor. I was, so to speak, numbered with the dead. It is strange how I accepted this unforeseen partnership,

this choice of nightmares forced upon me in the tenebrous land invaded by these mean and greedy phantoms.

"Kurtz discoursed. A voice! a voice! It rang deep to the very last. It survived his strength to hide in the

magnificent folds of eloquence the barren darkness of his heart. Oh, he struggled! he struggled! The wastes of

his weary brain were haunted by shadowy images nowimages of wealth and fame revolving obsequiously

round his unextinguishable gift of noble and lofty expression. My Intended, my station, my career, my

ideasthese were the subjects for the occasional utterances of elevated sentiments. The shade of the original

Kurtz frequented the bedside of the hollow sham, whose fate it was to be buried presently in the mold of

primeval earth. But both the diabolic love and the unearthly hate of the mysteries it had penetrated fought for

the possession of that soul satiated with primitive emotions, avid of lying fame, of sham distinction, of all the

"Sometimes he was contemptibly childish. He desired to have kings meet him at railwaystations on his

return from some ghastly Nowhere, where he intended to accomplish great things. 'You show them you have

in you something that is really profitable, and then there will be no limits to the recognition of your ability,'

he would say. 'Of course you must take care of the motives right motivesalways.' The long reaches that

were like one and the same reach, monotonous bends that were exactly alike, slipped past the steamer with

their multitude of secular trees looking patiently after this grimy fragment of another world, the forerunner of

change, of conquest, of trade, of massacres, of blessings. I looked aheadpiloting. 'Close the shutter,' said

Kurtz suddenly one day; 'I can't bear to look at this.' I did so. There was a silence. 'Oh, but I will wring your

"We broke downas I had expectedand had to lie up for repairs at the head of an island. This delay was

the first thing that shook Kurtz's confidence. One morning he gave me a packet of papers and a photograph,

the lot tied together with a shoestring. 'Keep this for me,' he said. 'This noxious fool' (meaning the

manager) 'is capable of prying into my boxes when I am not looking.' In the afternoon I saw him. He was

lying on his back with closed eyes, and I withdrew quietly, but I heard him mutter, 'Live rightly, die, die . . .' I

listened. There was nothing more. Was he rehearsing some speech in his sleep, or was it a fragment of a

phrase from some newspaper article? He had been writing for the papers and meant to do so again, 'for the

"His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a

precipice where the sun never shines. But I had not much time to give him, because I was helping the

enginedriver to take to pieces the leaky cylinders, to straighten a bent connectingrod, and in other such

matters. I lived in an infernal mess of rust, filings, nuts, bolts, spanners, hammers, ratchetdrillsthings I

abominate, because I don't get on with them. I tended the little forge we fortunately had aboard; I toiled

"One evening coming in with a candle I was startled to hear him say a little tremulously, 'I am lying here in

the dark waiting for death.' The light was within a foot of his eyes. I forced myself to murmur, 'Oh,

"Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to

see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory

face the expression of somber pride, of ruthless power, of craven terrorof an intense and hopeless despair.

Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of

complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision,he cried out twice, a cry that

"I blew the candle out and left the cabin. The pilgrims were dining in the messroom, and I took my place

opposite the manager, who lifted his eyes to give me a questioning glance, which I successfully ignored. He

leaned back, serene, with that peculiar smile of his sealing the unexpressed depths of his meanness. A

continuous shower of small flies streamed upon the lamp, upon the cloth, upon our hands and faces. Suddenly

the manager's boy put his insolent black head in the doorway, and said in a tone of scathing contempt

"All the pilgrims rushed out to see. I remained, and went on with my dinner. I believe I was considered

brutally callous. However, I did not eat much. There was a lamp in therelight, don't you knowand

outside it was so beastly, beastly dark. I went no more near the remarkable man who had pronounced a

judgment upon the adventures of his soul on this earth. The voice was gone. What else had been there? But I

"However, as you see, I did not go to join Kurtz there and then. I did not. I remained to dream the nightmare

out to the end, and to show my loyalty to Kurtz once more. Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life isthat

mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some

knowledge of yourselfthat comes too latea crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death.

It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing

underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory, without the great desire of

victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid skepticism, without much belief in

your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a

greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was within a hair'sbreadth of the last opportunity for

pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say. This is the reason

why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. Since I had peeped over

the edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare, that could not see the flame of the candle, but

was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the

horror!' He was a remarkable man. After all, this was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candor, it

had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth

the strange commingling of desire and hate. And it is not my own extremity I remember besta vision of

grayness without form filled with physical pain, and a careless contempt for the evanescence of all

thingseven of this pain itself. No! It is his extremity that I seem to have lived through. True, he had made

that last stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot.

And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just

compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible.

Perhaps! I like to think my summingup would not have been a word of careless contempt. Better his

crymuch better. It was an affirmation, a moral victory paid for by innumerable defeats, by abominable

terrors, by abominable satisfactions. But it was a victory! That is why I have remained loyal to Kurtz to the

last, and even beyond, when a long time after I heard once more, not his own voice, but the echo of his

magnificent eloquence thrown to me from a soul as translucently pure as a cliff of crystal.

"No, they did not bury me, though there is a period of time which I remember mistily, with a shuddering

wonder, like a passage through some inconceivable world that had no hope in it and no desire. I found myself

back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money

from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their

insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of

life was to me an irritating pretense, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew.

Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the

assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger

it is unable to comprehend. I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in

restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance. I dare say I was not very well at

that time. I tottered about the streetsthere were various affairs to settlegrinning bitterly at perfectly

respectable persons. I admit my behavior was inexcusable, but then my temperature was seldom normal in

these days. My dear aunt's endeavors to 'nurse up my strength' seemed altogether beside the mark. It was not

my strength that wanted nursing, it was my imagination that wanted soothing. I kept the bundle of papers

given me by Kurtz, not knowing exactly what to do with it. His mother had died lately, watched over, as I

was told, by his Intended. A cleanshaved man, with an official manner and wearing goldrimmed

spectacles, called on me one day and made inquiries, at first circuitous, afterwards suavely pressing, about

what he was pleased to denominate certain 'documents.' I was not surprised, because I had had two rows with

the manager on the subject out there. I had refused to give up the smallest scrap out of that package, and I

took the same attitude with the spectacled man. He became darkly menacing at last, and with much heat

argued that the Company had the right to every bit of information about its 'territories.' And, said he, 'Mr.

Kurtz's knowledge of unexplored regions must have been necessarily extensive and peculiarowing to his

great abilities and to the deplorable circumstances in which he had been placed: therefore'I assured him

Mr. Kurtz's knowledge, however extensive, did not bear upon the problems of commerce or administration.

He invoked then the name of science. 'It would be an incalculable loss if,' &c., &c. I offered him the report on

the 'Suppression of Savage Customs,' with the postscriptum torn off. He took it up eagerly, but ended by

sniffing at it with an air of contempt. 'This is not what we had a right to expect,' he remarked. 'Expect nothing

else,' I said. 'There are only private letters.' He withdrew upon some threat of legal proceedings, and I saw

him no more; but another fellow, calling himself Kurtz's cousin, appeared two days later, and was anxious to

hear all the details about his dear relative's last moments. Incidentally he gave me to understand that Kurtz

had been essentially a great musician. 'There was the making of an immense success,' said the man, who was

an organist, I believe, with lank gray hair flowing over a greasy coatcollar. I had no reason to doubt his

statement; and to this day I am unable to say what was Kurtz's profession, whether he ever had anywhich

was the greatest of his talents. I had taken him for a painter who wrote for the papers, or else for a journalist

who could paint but even the cousin (who took snuff during the interview) could not tell me what he had

beenexactly. He was a universal geniuson that point I agreed with the old chap, who thereupon blew his

nose noisily into a large cotton handkerchief and withdrew in senile agitation, bearing off some family letters

and memoranda without importance. Ultimately a journalist anxious to know something of the fate of his

'dear colleague' turned up. This visitor informed me Kurtz's proper sphere ought to have been politics 'on the

popular side.' He had furry straight eyebrows, bristly hair cropped short, an eyeglass on a broad ribbon, and,

becoming expansive, confessed his opinion that Kurtz really couldn't write a bit'but heavens! how that man

could talk! He electrified large meetings. He had faith don't you see?he had the faith. He could get

himself to believe anythinganything. He would have been a splendid leader of an extreme party.' 'What

party?' I asked. 'Any party,' answered the other. 'He was ananextremist.' Did I not think so? I assented.

Did I know, he asked, with a sudden flash of curiosity, 'what it was that had induced him to go out there?'

'Yes,' said I, and forthwith handed him the famous Report for publication, if he thought fit. He glanced

through it hurriedly, mumbling all the time, judged 'it would do,' and took himself off with this plunder.

"Thus I was left at last with a slim packet of letters and the girl's portrait. She struck me as beautiful I

mean she had a beautiful expression. I know that the sunlight can be made to lie too, yet one felt that no

manipulation of light and pose could have conveyed the delicate shade of truthfulness upon those features.

She seemed ready to listen without mental reservation, without suspicion, without a thought for herself. I

concluded I would go and give her back her portrait and those letters myself. Curiosity? Yes; and also some

other feeling perhaps. All that had been Kurtz's had passed out of my hands: his soul, his body, his station, his

plans, his ivory, his career. There remained only his memory and his Intendedand I wanted to give that up

too to the past, in a way,to surrender personally all that remained of him with me to that oblivion which is

the last word of our common fate. I don't defend myself. I had no clear perception of what it was I really

wanted. Perhaps it was an impulse of unconscious loyalty, or the fulfillment of one of these ironic necessities

that lurk in the facts of human existence. I don't know. I can't tell. But I went.

"I thought his memory was like the other memories of the dead that accumulate in every man's life,a vague

impress on the brain of shadows that had fallen on it in their swift and final passage; but before the high and

ponderous door, between the tall houses of a street as still and decorous as a wellkept alley in a cemetery, I

had a vision of him on the stretcher, opening his mouth voraciously, as if to devour all the earth with all its

mankind. He lived then before me; he lived as much as he had ever liveda shadow insatiable of splendid

appearances, of frightful realities; a shadow darker than the shadow of the night, and draped nobly in the

folds of a gorgeous eloquence. The vision seemed to enter the house with methe stretcher, the

phantombearers, the wild crowd of obedient worshipers, the gloom of the forests, the glitter of the reach

between the murky bends, the beat of the drum, regular and muffled like the beating of a heartthe heart of

a conquering darkness. It was a moment of triumph for the wilderness, an invading and vengeful rush which,

it seemed to me, I would have to keep back alone for the salvation of another soul. And the memory of what I

had heard him say afar there, with the horned shapes stirring at my back, in the glow of fires, within the

patient woods, those broken phrases came back to me, were heard again in their ominous and terrifying

simplicity. I remembered his abject pleading, his abject threats, the colossal scale of his vile desires, the

meanness, the torment, the tempestuous anguish of his soul. And later on I seemed to see his collected

languid manner, when he said one day, 'This lot of ivory now is really mine. The Company did not pay for it.

I collected it myself at a very great personal risk. I am afraid they will try to claim it as theirs though. H'm. It

is a difficult case. What do you think I ought to doresist? Eh? I want no more than justice.' . . . He wanted

no more than justice no more than justice. I rang the bell before a mahogany door on the first floor, and

while I waited he seemed to stare at me out of the glassy panelstare with that wide and immense stare

embracing, condemning, loathing all the universe. I seemed to hear the whispered cry, 'The horror! The

"The dusk was falling. I had to wait in a lofty drawing room with three long windows from floor to ceiling

that were like three luminous and bedraped columns. The bent gilt legs and backs of the furniture shone in

indistinct curves. The tall marble fireplace had a cold and monumental whiteness. A grand piano stood

massively in a corner, with dark gleams on the flat surfaces like a somber and polished sarcophagus. A high

"She came forward, all in black, with a pale head, floating towards me in the dusk. She was in mourning. It

was more than a year since his death, more than a year since the news came; she seemed as though she would

remember and mourn for ever. She took both my hands in hers and murmured, 'I had heard you were coming.'

I noticed she was not very youngI mean not girlish. She had a mature capacity for fidelity, for belief, for

suffering. The room seemed to have grown darker, as if all the sad light of the cloudy evening had taken

refuge on her forehead. This fair hair, this pale visage, this pure brow, seemed surrounded by an ashy halo

from which the dark eyes looked out at me. Their glance was guileless, profound, confident, and trustful. She

carried her sorrowful head as though she were proud of that sorrow, as though she would say, I I alone

know how to mourn for him as he deserves. But while we were still shaking hands, such a look of awful

desolation came upon her face that I perceived she was one of those creatures that are not the playthings of

Time. For her he had died only yesterday. And, by Jove! the impression was so powerful that for me too he

seemed to have died only yesterdaynay, this very minute. I saw her and him in the same instant of time

his death and her sorrowI saw her sorrow in the very moment of his death. Do you understand? I saw

them togetherI heard them together. She had said, with a deep catch of the breath, 'I have survived;' while

my strained ears seemed to hear distinctly, mingled with her tone of despairing regret, the summingup

whisper of his eternal condemnation. I asked myself what I was doing there, with a sensation of panic in my

heart as though I had blundered into a place of cruel and absurd mysteries not fit for a human being to behold.

She motioned me to a chair. We sat down. I laid the packet gently on the little table, and she put her hand

over it. . . . 'You knew him well,' she murmured, after a moment of mourning silence.

"'Intimacy grows quick out there,' I said. 'I knew him as well as it is possible for one man to know another.'

"'And you admired him,' she said. 'It was impossible to know him and not to admire him. Was it?'

"'He was a remarkable man,' I said, unsteadily. Then before the appealing fixity of her gaze, that seemed to

"'Love him,' she finished eagerly, silencing me into an appalled dumbness. 'How true! how true! But when

you think that no one knew him so well as I! I had all his noble confidence. I knew him best.'

"'You knew him best,' I repeated. And perhaps she did. But with every word spoken the room was growing

darker, and only her forehead, smooth and white, remained illumined by the unextinguishable light of belief

"'You were his friend,' she went on. 'His friend,' she repeated, a little louder. 'You must have been, if he had

given you this, and sent you to me. I feel I can speak to youand oh! I must speak. I want you you who

have heard his last wordsto know I have been worthy of him. . . . It is not pride. . . . Yes! I am proud to

know I understood him better than anyone on earthhe told me so himself. And since his mother died I have

"I listened. The darkness deepened. I was not even sure whether he had given me the right bundle. I rather

suspect he wanted me to take care of another batch of his papers which, after his death, I saw the manager

examining under the lamp. And the girl talked, easing her pain in the certitude of my sympathy; she talked as

thirsty men drink. I had heard that her engagement with Kurtz had been disapproved by her people. He wasn't

rich enough or something. And indeed I don't know whether he had not been a pauper all his life. He had

given me some reason to infer that it was his impatience of comparative poverty that drove him out there.

"'. . . Who was not his friend who had heard him speak once?' she was saying. 'He drew men towards him by

what was best in them.' She looked at me with intensity. 'It is the gift of the great,' she went on, and the sound

of her low voice seemed to have the accompaniment of all the other sounds, full of mystery, desolation, and

sorrow, I had ever heardthe ripple of the river, the soughing of the trees swayed by the wind, the murmurs

of wild crowds, the faint ring of incomprehensible words cried from afar, the whisper of a voice speaking

from beyond the threshold of an eternal darkness. 'But you have heard him! You know!' she cried.

"'Yes, I know,' I said with something like despair in my heart, but bowing my head before the faith that was

in her, before that great and saving illusion that shone with an unearthly glow in the darkness, in the

triumphant darkness from which I could not have defended herfrom which I could not even defend myself.

"'What a loss to meto us!'she corrected herself with beautiful generosity; then added in a murmur, 'To

the world.' By the last gleams of twilight I could see the glitter of her eyes, full of tearsof tears that would

"'I have been very happyvery fortunatevery proud,' she went on. 'Too fortunate. Too happy for a little

"She stood up; her fair hair seemed to catch all the remaining light in a glimmer of gold. I rose too.

"'And of all this,' she went on, mournfully, 'of all his promise, and of all his greatness, of his generous mind,

"'No!' she cried. 'It is impossible that all this should be lostthat such a life should be sacrificed to leave

nothingbut sorrow. You know what vast plans he had. I knew of them tooI could not perhaps

understand, but others knew of them. Something must remain. His words, at least, have not died.'

"'And his example,' she whispered to herself. 'Men looked up to him,his goodness shone in every act. His

"'But I do not. I cannotI cannot believenot yet. I cannot believe that I shall never see him again, that

"She put out her arms as if after a retreating figure, stretching them black and with clasped pale hands across

the fading and narrow sheen of the window. Never see him! I saw him clearly enough then. I shall see this

eloquent phantom as long as I live, and I shall see her too, a tragic and familiar Shade, resembling in this

gesture another one, tragic also, and bedecked with powerless charms, stretching bare brown arms over the

glitter of the infernal stream, the stream of darkness. She said suddenly very low, 'He died as he lived.'

"'His end,' said I, with dull anger stirring in me, 'was in every way worthy of his life.'

"'And I was not with him,' she murmured. My anger subsided before a feeling of infinite pity.

"'Ah, but I believed in him more than anyone on earthmore than his own mother, more thanhimself. He

needed me! Me! I would have treasured every sigh, every word, every sign, every glance.'

"'Forgive me. IIhave mourned so long in silence in silence. . . . You were with himto the last? I

think of his loneliness. Nobody near to understand him as I would have understood. Perhaps no one to hear. .

"'To the very end,' I said, shakily. 'I heard his very last words. . . .' I stopped in a fright.

"'Repeat them,' she said in a heartbroken tone. 'I wantI wantsomethingsomethingtoto live

"I was on the point of crying at her, 'Don't you hear them?' The dusk was repeating them in a persistent

whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of a rising wind.

"'His last wordto live with,' she murmured. 'Don't you understand I loved himI loved himI loved

"I heard a light sigh, and then my heart stood still, stopped dead short by an exulting and terrible cry, by the

cry of inconceivable triumph and of unspeakable pain. 'I knew itI was sure!' . . . She knew. She was sure. I

heard her weeping; she had hidden her face in her hands. It seemed to me that the house would collapse

before I could escape, that the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not

fall for such a trifle. Would they have fallen, I wonder, if I had rendered Kurtz that justice which was his due?

Hadn't he said he wanted only justice ? But I couldn't. I could not tell her. It would have been too darktoo

Marlow ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the pose of a meditating Buddha. Nobody moved for a

time. "We have lost the first of the ebb," said the Director, suddenly. I raised my head. The offing was barred

by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber