by Joseph Conrad

                           First published in 1901.

I The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest.
The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing
for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.

The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable
waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the
luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in
red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished 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, brood- ing motionless over the
biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.

The Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We four affectionately watched his
back as he stood in the bows looking to seaward. On the whole river there was nothing that
looked half so nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trust- worthiness
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 some-
where, the bond of the sea. Besides holding our hearts together through long periods of
separation, it had the effect of making us tolerant of each other's yarns -- and even convictions.
The Lawyer -- the best of old fellows -- had, because of his many years and many virtues, the
only cushion on deck, and was lying on the only rug. The Accountant had brought out already
a box of dominoes, and was toying architecturally with the bones. Marlow sat cross-legged
right aft, leaning against the mizzenmast. He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a
straight back, an ascetic aspect, and, with his arms dropped, the palms of hands out- wards,
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. After- wards there was silence on board
the yacht. For some reason or other we did not begin that game of domi- noes. 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 pacifi- cally; the sky, without a speck, was a benign
immen- sity of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex marsh was like a gauzy and radiant
fabric, hung from the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds.
Only the gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches, became more sombre every
minute, as if angered by the approach of the sun.

And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white
changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to
death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men.

Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became less brilliant but more
profound. The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of
good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a
waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the venerable stream not in
the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding
memories. And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes, "followed the
sea" with reverence and affection, than to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower
reaches of the Thames. The tidal cur- rent runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded
with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea. It
had known and served all the men of whom the nation is proud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir
John Franklin, knights all, titled and untitled -- the great knights-errant of the sea. It had borne
all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from the Golden Hind
returning with her round flanks full of treasure, to be visited by the Queen's Highness and thus
pass out of the gigantic tale, to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests -- and that
never returned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from Deptford, from
Greenwich, from Erith -- the adventurers and the settlers; kings' ships and the ships of men on
'Change; captains, admirals, the dark "interlopers" of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned
"generals" of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on
that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land,
bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river
into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths,
the germs of empires.

The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear along the shore. The
Chapman light- house, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone strongly. Lights of ships
moved in the fairway -- a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the
upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a
brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.

"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth."

He was the only man of us who still "followed the sea." The worst that could be said of him
was that he did not represent his class. He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while
most seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the
stay-at-home order, and their home is always with them -- the ship; and so is their country --
the sea. One ship is very much like another, and the sea is always the same. In the immutability
of their sur- roundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changLng immensity of life,
glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful igno- rance; 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
illuminination of moonshine.

His remark did not seem at all surprising. It was just like Marlow. It was accepted in silence.
No one took the trouble to grunt even; and presently he said, very slow --

"I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years
ago -- the other day.... Light came out of this river since -- you say Knights? Yes; but it is like
a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker -- may it
last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the
feelings of a commander of a fine -- what d'ye call 'em? -- trireme in the Mediterranean, or-
dered suddenly to the north run overland across the Gauls in a hurry; put in charge of one of
these craft the legionaries -- a wonderful lot of handy men they must have been, too -- used to
build, apparently by the hundred, in a month or two, if we may believe what we read. Imagine
him here -- the very end of the world, a sea the colour of lead, a sky the colour of smoke, a
kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina -- and going up this river with stores, or orders, or
what you like. Sand-banks, marshes, forests, savages, -- precious little to eat fit for a civilized
man, nothing but Thames water to drink. No Falernian wine here, no going ashore. Here and
there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay -- cold, fog,
tempests, disease, exile, and death -- death skulk- ing in the air, in the water, in the bush. They
must have been dying like flies here. Oh, yes -- he did it. Did it very well, too, no doubt, and
without thinking much about it either, except afterwards to brag of what he had gone through in
his time, perhaps. They were men enough to face the darkness. And perhaps he was cheered
by keeping his eye on a chance of pro- motion to the fleet at Ravenna by and by, if he had
good friends in Rome and survived the awful climate. Or think of a decent young citizen in a
toga -- perhaps too much dice, you know -- coming out here in the train of some prefect, or
tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his fortunes. Land in a swamp, march through the
woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him --
all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of
wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the
incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work
upon him. The fascination of the abomination -- you know, imagine the growing regrets, the
longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the sur- render, the hate."

He paused.

"Mind," he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of the hand outwards, so that,
with his legs folded before him, he had the pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes
and without a lotus-flower -- "Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves us is
efficiency -- the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not much account, really. They
were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect.
They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force -- nothing to boast of, when you
have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They
grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with
violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind -- as is very proper for
those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away
from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a
pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the
back of it; not a sentimental pre- tence 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,
over- taking, joining, crossing each other -- then separating slowly or hastily. The traffic of the
great city went on in the deepening night upon the sleepless river. We looked on, waiting
patiently -- there was nothing else to do till the end of the flood; but it was only after a long
silence, when he said, in a hesitating voice, "I suppose you fellows remember I did once turn
fresh water sailor for a bit," that we knew we were fated, before the ebb began to run, to hear
about one of Marlow's inconclusive experiences.

"I don't want to bother you much with what hap- pened 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 experi- ence.
It seemed somehow to throw a kind of light on everything about me -- and into my thoughts. It
was sombre enough, too -- and pitiful -- not extraordinary in any way -- not very clear either.
No, not very clear. And yet it seemed to throw a kind of light.

"I had then, as you remember, just returned to London after a lot of Indian Ocean, Pacific,
China Seas a regular dose of the East -- six years or so, and I was loafing about, hindering you
fellows in your work and invading your homes, just as though I had got a heavenly mission to
civilize you. It was very fine for a time, but after a bit I did get tired of resting. Then I began to
look for a ship -- I should think the hardest work on earth. But the ships wouldn't even look at
me. And I got tired of that game, too.

"Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South
America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration. At that time
there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly
inviting on a map (but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and say, 'When I grow up I
will go there.' The North Pole was one of these places, I remember. Well, I haven't been there
yet, and shall not try now. The glamour's off. Other places were scattered about the Equator,
and in every sort of latitude all over the two hemispheres. I have been in some of them, and . . .
well, we won't talk about that. But there was one yet -- the biggest, the most blank, so to
speak -- that I had a hankering after.

"True, by this time it was not a blank space any more. It had got filled since my boyhood with
rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery -- a white
patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. It had become a place of dark- ness. But there was
in it one river especially, a mighty big river, that you could see on the map, resembling an
immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast
country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land. And as I looked at the map of it in a
shop-window, it fascinated me as a snake would a bird -- a silly little bird. Then I remem-
bered there was a big concern, a Company for trade on that river. Dash it all! I thought to
myself, they can't trade without using some kind of craft on that lot of fresh water --
steamboats! Why shouldn't I try to get charge of one? I went on along Fleet Street, but could
not shake off the idea. The snake had charmed me.

"You understand it was a Continental concern, that Trading society; but I have a lot of relations
living on the Continent, because it's cheap and not so nasty as it looks, they say.

"I am sorry to own I began to worry them. This was already a fresh departure for me. I was
not used to get things that way, you know. I always went my own road and on my own legs
where I had a mind to go. I wouldn't have believed it of myself; but, then -- you see -- I felt
somehow I must get there by hook or by crook. So I worried them. The men said 'My dear
fellow,' and did nothing. Then -- would you believe it? -- I tried the women. I, Charlie
Marlow, set the women to work -- to get a job. Heavens! We]l, you see, the notion drove me.
I had an aunt, a dear enthu- siastic 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 influ- ence with,' etc., etc. She was determined
to make no end of fuss to get me appointed skipper of a river steamboat, if such was my
fancy.

"I got my appointment -- of course; and I got it very quick. It appears the Company had
received news that one of their captains had been killed in a scuffle with the natives. This was
my chance, and it made me the more anxious to go. It was only months and months
afterwards, when I made the attempt to re- cover what was left of the body, that I heard the
original quarrel arose from a misunderstanding about some hens. Yes, two black hens.
Fresleven -- that was the fellow's name, a Dane -- thought himself wronged somehow in the
bargain, so he went ashore and started to hammer the chief of the village with a stick. Oh, it
didn't surprise me in the least to hear this, and at the same time to be told that Fresleven was
the gentlest, quietest creature that ever walked on two legs. No doubt he was; but he had been
a couple of years al- ready out there engaged in the noble cause, you know, and he probably
felt the need at last of asserting his self-respect in some way. Therefore he whacked the old
nigger mercilessly, while a big crowd of his people watched him, thunderstruck, till some man
-- I was told the chief's son -- in desperation at hearing the old chap yell, made a tentative jab
with a spear at the white man -- and of course it went quite easy between the shoulder-blades.
Then the whole population cleared into the forest, expecting all kinds of calamities to happen,
while, on the other hand, the steamer Fres- leven 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 en- dosures. A calamity had come to it, sure enough. The people had
vanished. Mad terror had scattered them, men, women, and children, through the bush, and
they had never returned. What became of the hens I don't know either. I should think the
cause of progress got them, anyhow. However, through this glorious affair I got my
appointment, before I had fairly begun to hope for it.

"I flew around like mad to get ready, and before forty-eight hours I was crossing the Channel
to snow myself to my employers, and sign the contract. In a very few hours I arrived in a city
that always makes me think of a whited sepulchre. Prejudice no doubt. I had no difficulty in
finding the Company's offices. It was the biggest thing in the town, and everybody I met was
full of it. They were going to run an over sea empire, and make no end of coin by trade.

"A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, high houses, innumerable windows with
venetian blinds, a dead silence, grass sprouting between the stones, im- posing carriage
archways right and left, immense double doors standing ponderously ajar. I slipped through
one of these cracks, went up a swept and un- garnished staircase, as arid as a desert, and
opened the first door I came to. Two women, one fat and the other slim, sat on
straw-bottomed chairs, knitting black wool. The slim one got up and walked straight at me --
still knitting with downcast eyes -- and only just as I began to think of getting out of her way,
as you would for a somnambulist, stood still, and looked up. Her dress was as plain as an
umbrella-cover, and she turned round without a word and preceded me into a waiting-room. I
gave my name, and looked about. Deal table in the middle, plain chairs all round the walls, on
one end a large shining map, marked with all the colours of a rainbow. There was a vast
amount of red -- good to see at any time, because one knows that some real work is done in
there, a deuce of a lot of blue, a little green, smears of orange, and, on the East Coast, a purple
patch, to show where the jolly pioneers of progress drink the jolly lager-beer. However, I
wasn't going into any of these. I was going into the yellow. Dead in the centre. And the river
was there -- fascinating -- deadly -- like a snake. Ough! A door opened, a white-haired
secretarial head, but wearing a compassionate expression, appeared, and a skinny forefinger
beckoned me into the sanctuary. Its light was dim, and a heavy writing-desk squatted in the
middle. From behind that structure came out an impression of pale plumpness in a frock-coat.
The great man himself. He was five feet six, I should judge, and had his grip on the handle-end
of ever so many millions. He shook hands, I fancy, murmured vaguely, Was satisfied with my
French. Bon voyage.

"In about forty-five seconds I found myself again in the waiting-room with the compassionate
secretary, who, full of desolation and sympathy, made me sign some document. I believe I
undertook amongst other things not to disclose any trade secrets. Well, I am not going to.

"I began to feel slightly uneasy. You know I am not used to such ceremonies, and there was
something ominous in the atmosphere. It was just as though I had been let into some
conspiracy -- I don't know -- something not quite right; and I was glad to get out. In the outer
room the two women knitted black wool feverishly. People were arriving, and the younger one
was walking back and forth introducing them. The old one sat on her chair. Her flat cloth
slippers were propped up on a foot-warmer, and a cat reposed on her lap. She wore a
starched white affair on her head, had a wart on one cheek, and silver-rimmed spectacles hung
on the tip of her nose. She glanced at me above the glasses. The swift and indifferent placidity
of that look troubled me. Two youths with foolish and cheery countenances were being piloted
over, and she threw at them the same quick glance of unconcerned wisdom. She seemed to
know all about them and about me, too. An eerie feeling came over me. She seemed uncanny
and fateful. Often far away there I thought of these two, guarding the door of Darkness,
knitting black wool as for a warm pall, one introducing, introducing continuously to the
unknown, the other scrutinizing the cheery and foolish faces with unconcerned old eyes. Ave!
Old knittter of black wool. Morituri te salutant. Not many of those she looked at ever saw her
again -- not half, by a long way.

"There was yet a visit to the doctor. 'A simple for- mality,' 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 up-stairs, and
led me forth. He was shabby and care- less, 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 ver- mouths he glorified the Company's business, and by and by 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, and we rose.

"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 un- shaven
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 fam- ily?' he asked, in a
matter-of-fact 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 be -- a little,' answered that original, imperturb- ably. '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? Good-bye. Ah! Good-bye. Adieu. In the tropics one must before
everytlung keep calm.' . . . He lifted a warning forefinger. . . 'Du calme, du calme, Adieu.'

"One thing more remained to do -- say good-bye to my excellent aunt. I found her triumphant.
I had a cup of tea -- the last decent cup of tea for many days -- and in a room that most
soothingly looked just as you would expect a lady's drawing-room 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 creature -- a piece of good fortune for the
Company -- a man you don't get hold of every day. Good heavens! and I was going to take
charge of a two-penny-half-penny river-steamboat with a penny whistle attached! It appeared,
however, I was also one of the Workers, with a capital -- you 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 uncomfortable. I ventured to hint that
the Company was run for profit.

" 'You forget, dear Charlie, that the labourer 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 has 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 up and knock the whole thing
over.

"After this I got embraced, told to wear flannel, be sure to write often, and so on -- and I left.
In the street -- I don't know why -- a 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 twenty-four hours' notice, with
less thought than most men give to the crossing of a street, had a moment -- I won't say of
hesitation, but of startled pause, before this com- monplace 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 centre of a
continent, I were about to set off for the centre of the earth.

"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 custom-house officers. I watched the
coast. Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is
before you -- smiling, 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 mak-
ing, with an aspect of monotonous grimness. The edge of a colossal jungle, so dark-green 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 greyish-whitish specks showed up clustered inside
the white surf, with a flag fiying 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 custom-house clerks to levy toll in what looked like
a God-forsaken wilder- ness, with a tin shed and a flag-pole lost in it; landed more soldiers to
take care of the custom-house clerks, presumably. Some, I heard, got drowned in the surf; but
whether they did or not, nobody seemed particu- larly 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 places -- trading places with names like Gran' Bas- sam, Little Popo; names
that seemed to belong to some sordid farce acted in front of a sinister back-cloth. 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 sombreness 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 posi- tive pleasure, like the speech of a brother. It was some- thing
natural, that had its reason, that had a meaning Now and then a boat from the shore gave one a
mo- mentary 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 masks -- these chaps; but they had bone, muscle, a
wild vitality, an intense energy of move- ment, 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 straightfor- ward facts; but the feeling would
not last long. Some- thing would turn up to scare it away. Once, I remem- ber, we came upon
a man-of-war 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 six-inch 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 six-inch 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 hap- pen. 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 of natives -- he called them enemies! -- hidden out of sight
somewhere.

"We gave her her ktters (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 im- pression, but the general sense of vague and oppres- sive
wonder grew upon me. It was ]ike a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares

"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 made a start for a place thirty miles higher up.

"I had my passage on a little sea-going 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, speak- ing English with great precision and
considerable bit- terness. 'It is funny what some people will do for a few francs a month. I
wonder what becomes of that kind when it goes upcountry?' I said to him I expected to see
that soon. 'So-o-o!' 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 for him, or the country perhaps.'

"At last we opened a reach. A rocky cliff appeared, mounds of turned-up earth by the shore,
houses on a hill, others with iron roofs, amongst a waste of exca- vations, or hanging to the
declivity. A continuous noise of the rapids above hovered over this scene of in- habited
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 barrack-like
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 boulders, and also for an undersized railway-truck 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
objectless blasting was all the work going on.

"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 waggled 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 the sea. All their meagre breasts panted together, the violently dilated
nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me within six inches, with- out 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 re-
assured, and with a large, white, rascally grin, and a glance at his charge, seemed to take me
into partner- ship in his exalted trust. After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high
and just proceedings.

"Instead of going up, I turned and descended to the left. My idea was to let that chain-gang 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 sometimes -- that's only one way of resisting --
without 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, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove
men -- men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of
that land I would become ac- quainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed 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 had seen.

"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 con- nected 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 drainage-pipes for the settlement had been tumbled
in there. There wasn't one that was not broken. It was a wanton smash-up. 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 the 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 sound -- as though the tear- ing
pace of the launched earth had suddenly become audible.

"Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees leaning against the trunks, clinging to the
earth, half coming out, half effased within the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment,
and despair. An- other 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 slowly -- it 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 green- ish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality
of time contracts, lost in uncon- genial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened,
became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest. These moribund shapes
were free as air -- and nearly as thin. I began to distinguish the gleam of the 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 young -- almost a boy -- but 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 held -- there was no other movement and no other
glance. He had tied a bit of white worsted round his neck -- Why? Where did he get it? Was it
a badge -- an ornament -- charm -- a propitiatory act? Was there any idea at all con- nected
with it? It looked startling round his black neck, this bit of white thread from beyond the seas.

"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 phan- tom 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 horror- struck, one of these creatures rose to his hands and knees,
and went off on all-fours 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 on his
breastbone. "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 clean necktie, and varnished boots. No hat. Hair
parted, brushed, oiled, under a green-lined parasol held in a big white hand. He was amazing,
and had a penholder behind his ear.

"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 desk-life. 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 fe]low. Yes; I re- spected 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 got-up shirt-fronts were achieve- ments of character. He had been out nearly three years;
and later, 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.' Thus this man had verily accomplished
something. And he was devoted to his books, which were in apple-pie 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 manu- factured goods, rubbishy
cottons, beads, and brass- wire set into the depths of darkness, and in return came a precious
trickle of ivory.

"I had to wait in the station for ten days -- an 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 truckle- bed with a sick man
(some invalid agent from up- country) was put in there, he exhibited a gentle an- noyance. 'The
groans of this sick person,' he said, 'distract my attention. And without that it is ex- tremely
difficult to guard against clerical errors in this climate.'

"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 first-class agent; and seeing my
disappointment at this information, he added slowly, laying down his pen, 'He is a very
remarkable person.' Further ques- tions elicited from him that Mr. Kurtz was at present in
charge of a trading-post, a very important one, in the true ivory-country, 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 lament- able 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
station-yard, '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 deck -- '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 letter -- at that Central Station.' He stared at me for a moment with his
mild, bulging eyes. 'Oho, he will go far, very far,' he began again. 'He will be a somebody in the
Administration before long. They, above -- the Coun- cil in Europe, you know -- mean him to
be.'

"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 homeward-bound 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 see the still treetops of the grove of
death.

"Next day I left that station at last, with a caravan of sixty men, for a two-hundred-mile tramp.

"No use telling you much about that. Paths, paths, everywhere; a stamped-in network of paths
spreading over the empty land, through the 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 travelling on the road
between Deal and Gravesend, catching the yo- kels 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 60-lb. 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 water-gourd and his long staff lying by his side. A great silence around and above.
Perhaps on some quiet night the tremor of far-off drums, sinking, swell- ing, a tremor vast,
faint; a sound weird, appealing, suggestive, and wild -- and 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
festive -- not 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 middle-aged negro, with a bullet-hole 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 coming to. 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, scorn- fully. 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 night
-- quite 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 hour afterwards I came upon the whole concern wrecked in a bush -- man,
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 remem-
bered 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 interest- ing. However, all that is to
no purpose. On the fif- teenth 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 enclosed by a crazy fence of rushes. A ne-
glected 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 moustaches, 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 agi- tation, '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 sure
not at all. Certainly the affair was too stupid -- when I think of it -- to 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 pieces to the sta- tion, took some months.

"My first interview with the manager was curious. He did not ask me to sit down after my
twenty-mile walk that morning. He was commonplace in com- plexion, 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 trench- ant and
heavy as an axe. But even at these times the rest of his person seemed to disclaim the intention.
Otherwise there was only an indefinable, faint expres- sion of his lips, something stealthy -- a
smile -- not a smile -- I remember it, but I can't explain. It was un- conscious, 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 com- mon trader, from his youth up employed in these
parts -- nothing more. He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect.
He inspired uneasiness. That was it! Uneasiness. Not a definite mistrust -- just uneasiness --
nothing more. You have no idea how effective such a . . . a . . . faculy 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 learn- ing, and no intelligence. His position had come
to him -- why? Perhaps because he was never ill . . . He had served three terms of three years
out there . . . Because triumphant health in the general rout of con- stitutions is a kind of power
in itself. When he went home on leave he rioted on a large scale -- pompously. Jack ashore --
with a difference -- in externals only. This one could gather from his casual talk. He origi-
nated nothing, he could keep the routine going -- that'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 en- trails.' 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 things -- but the seal
was on. When annoyed at meal- times 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 mess-room. Where he sat was the first place -- the 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 over- fed young negro from the coast -- to treat the white
men, under his very eyes, with provoking insolence.

"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 up-river 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
on -- and so on, and so on. He paid no attention to my explanation, and, playing with a stick of
sealing-wax, repeated several times that the situa- tion was 'very grave, very grave.' There
were ru- mours 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 under- stand his anxiety. He was, he said, 'very, very uneasy.' Certainly he fidgeted on
his chair a good deal, ex- claimed, 'Ah, Mr. Kurtz!' broke the stick of sealing- wax and
seemed dumfounded 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 can I tell?' I said. 'I haven't even seen the wreck yet -- some 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 verandah) 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 patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion.

"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 moustaches 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 in the bottom of
his pail.

"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 everything -- and 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, for several days, sitting in a bit of shade
looking very sick and trying to recover himself: afterwards he arose and went out -- and 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 pro- nounced,
then the words, 'take advantage of this un- fortunate accident.' One of the men was the
manager. I wished him a good evening. 'Did you ever see anything like it -- eh? it is incredible,'
he said, and walked off. The other man remained. He was a first-class agent, young,
gentlemanly, a bit reserved, with a forked little beard and a hooked nose. He was stand-offish
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 by and by 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
silver-mounted dressing-case 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 tro- phies. The
business intrusted to this fellow was the making of bricks -- so I had been informed; but there
wasn't a fragment of a brick anywhere in the station, and he could not make bricks without
something, I don't know what -- straw maybe. Anyway, 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. How- ever, they were all waiting all the sixteen or twenty
pilgrims of them -- for 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
disease -- as 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 else -- as the philanthropic pretence 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 trading-post 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 finger -- oh, 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 chari- table of saints into a kick.

"I had no idea why he wanted to be sociable, but as we chatted in there it suddenly oocurred
to me the fellow was trying to get at something -- in fact, pump- ing me. He alluded constantly
to Europe, to the peo- ple I was supposed to know there -- putting leading questions as to my
acquaintances in the sepulchral city, and so on. His little eyes glittered like mica discs -- with
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 only 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 sombre -- almost black.
The move- ment of the woman was stately, and the effect of the torchlight on the face was
sinister.

"It arrested me, and he stood by civilly, holding an empty half-pint champagne bottle (medical
comforts) with the candle stuck in it. To my question he said Mr. Kurtz had painted this -- in
this very station more than a year ago -- while waiting for means to go to his trading-post. 'Tell
me, pray,' said I, 'who is this Mr. Kurtz?'

" '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. Every one 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 sud- denly, 'for the
guidance of the cause intrusted to us by Europe, so to speak, higher intelligence, wide sympa-
thies, 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 inter- rupted, really surprised. He paid no attention. 'Yes. Today he is chief of the
best station, next year he will be assistant-manager, two years more and . . . but I daresay 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 recom- mended you. Oh, don't say no. I've my own
eyes to trust.' Light dawned upon me. My dear aunt's influ- ential acquaintances were
producing an unexpected effect upon that young man. I nearly burst into a laugh. 'Do you read
the Company's confidential cor- respondence?' I asked. He hadn't a word to say. It was great
fun. 'When Mr. Kurtz,' I continued, se- verely, 'is General Manager, you won't have the op-
portunity.'

"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 moustaches, appearing near us. 'Serve him
right. Transgression -- punishment -- bang! Piti- less, 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 be- came crestfallen all at once. 'Not in bed yet,' he said, with a kind of servile
heartiness; 'it's so natural. Ha! Danger -- agitation.' He vanished. I went on to the riverside,
and the other followed me. I heard a scath- ing murmur at my ear, 'Heap of muffs -- go to.'
The pilgrims could be seen in knots gesticulating, discuss- ing. 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 mys-
tery, 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 false idea of my disposition....'

"I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistophe- les, 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 assistant-manager by and by under the
present man, and I could see that the com- ing 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 for- est was before
my eyes; there were shiny patches on the black creek. The moon had spread over every- thing
a thin layer of silver -- over 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 sombre gap
glittering, glitter- ing, as it llowed broadly by without a murmur. All this was great, expectant,
mute, while the man jab- bered 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, too -- God knows! Yet somehow it didn't bring any image
with it -- no 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 peo- ple in Mars. If you asked him
for some idea how they looked and behaved, he would get shy and mutter something about
'walking on all-fours.' If you as much as smiled, he would -- though a man of sixty -- offer to
fight you. I would not have gone so far as to fight for Kurtz, but I went for him near enough to
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 flavour of mortality in lies
which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world -- what 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 influ- ence in Europe. I became in an instant as much of a pretence 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 see you 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 dream -- making a vain attempt, because
no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that com- mingling of absurdity,
surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the
incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...."

He was silent for a while.

". . . No, it is impossible; it is impossible to con- vey the life-sensation of any given epoch of
one's ex- istence -- that which makes its truth, its meaning its subtle and penetrating essence. It
is impossible. We live, as we dream alone...."

He paused again again if reflesting, then added:

"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 clue to the faint uneasi- ness
inspired by this narrative that seemed to shape itself without human lips in the heavy night-air of
the river.

". . . Yes -- I 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 con- ceive, 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 tools -- intelligent men.' He did not make bricks -- why, there was a
physical impossibility in the way -- as I was well aware; and if he did secretarial work for the
manager, it was be- cause '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 work -- to stop the hole. Rivets I wanted. There were cases of them
down at the coast cases piled up -- burst -- split! 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 down -- and there wasn't one rivet to be
found where it was wanted. We had plates that would to, but nothing to fasten them with. And
every week the messenger, a lone negro, letterbag on shoul- der 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 handker- chiefs. And no rivets. Three carriers could have
brought all that was wanted to set that steamboat afloat.

"He was becoming confidential now, but I fancv 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 rivets -- and 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 way -- for 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 man
-- you 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 hope- ful than I had been for days. It was a
great comfort to turn from that chap to my influential friend, the battered, twisted, ruined,
tin-pot steamboat. I clam- bered on board. She rang under my feet like an empty Huntley &
Palmer biscuit-tin 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
infiuential 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 work -- no man does -- but I like what is in the work
-- the chance to find yourself. Your own reality -- for your- self, not for others -- what no
other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really
means.

"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 natur- ally despised -- on account of their imperfect manners, I suppose. This
was the foreman -- a boiler-maker by trade -- a good worker. He was a lank, bony, yellow-
faced man, with big intense eyes. His aspect was worried, and his head was as bald as the
palm of my hand; but his hair in falling seemed to have stuck to his chin, and had prospered in
the new locality, for his beard hung down to his waist. He was a widower with six young
children (he had left them in charge of a sister of his to come out there), and the passion of his
life was pigeon-flying. He was an enthusiast and a connoisseur. He would rave about pigeons.
After work hours he used sometimes to come over from his hut for a talk about his children
and his pigeons; at work, when he had to crawl in the mud under the bottom of the steamboat,
he would tie up that beard of his in a kind of white serviette he brought for the purpose. It had
loops to go over his ears. In the eve- ning 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 en- tangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, fes- toons, 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 snorb reached us from
afar, as though an ichthyosaurus had been taking a bath of glitter in the great river. 'After all,'
said the boiler-maker in a reasonable tone, 'why shouldn't we get the rivets?' Why not, indeed!
I did not know of any reason why we shouldn't. 'They'll come in three weeks,' I said,
confidently.

"But they didn't. Instead of rivets there came an invasion, an infliction, a visitation. It came in
sections during the next three weeks, each section headed by a donkey carrying a white man in
new clothes and tan shoes, bowing from that elevation right and left to the impressed pilgrims.
A quarrelsome band of footsore sulky niggers trod on the heels of the don- key; a lot of tents,
campstools, tin boxes, white cases, brown bales would be shot down in the court-yard, and
the air of mystery would deepen a little over the muddle of the station. Five such instalments
came, with their absurd air of disorderly flight with the loot of innumerable outfit shops and
provision stores, that, one would think, they were lugging, after a raid, into the wilderness for
equitable division. It was an inextricable mess of things decent in themselves but that human
folly made look like the spoils of thieving.

"This devoted band called itself the Eldorado Exploring Expedition, and I believe they were
sworn to secrecy. Their talk, however, was the talk of sordid buccaneers: it was reckless
without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage; there was not an atom
of foresight or of serious intention in the whole batch of them, and they did not seem aware
these things are wanted for the work of the world. To tear treasure out of the bowels of the
land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars
breaking into a safe. Who paid the expenses of the noble enterprise I don't know; but the uncle
of our manager was leader of that lot.

"In exterior he resembled a butcher in a poor neigh- bourhood, and his eyes had a look of
sleepy cunning. He carried his fat paunch with ostentation on his short legs, and during the time
his gang infested the station spoke to no one but his nephew. You could see these two roaming
about all day long with their heads close together in an everlasting confab.

"I had given up worrying myself about the rivets. One's capacity for that kind of folly is more
limited than you would suppose. I said Hang! -- and let things slide. I had plenty of time for
meditation, and now and then I would give some thought to Kurtz. I wasn't very interested in
him. No. Still, I was curious to see whether this man, who had come out equipped with moral
ideas of some sort, would climb to the top after all and how he would set about his work when
there."
 

                                   II
 

"One evening as I was lying flat on the deck of my steamboat, I heard voices approaching --
and there were the nephew and the uncle strolling along the bank. I laid my head on my arm
again, and had nearly lost myself in a doze, when somebody said in my ear, as it were: 'I am as
harmless as a little child, but I don't like to be dictated to. Am I the manager -- or am I not? I
was ordered to send him there. It's incred- ible.'. . . 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 show- ing what
he could do; and I was instructed accord- ingly. Look at the influence that man must have. Is it
not frightful?' They both agreed it was frightful, then made several bizarre remarks: 'Make rain
and fine weather -- one man -- the Council -- by the nose' -- bits of absurd sentences that got
the better of my drowsiness, so that I had pretty near the whole of my wits about me when the
uncle said, 'The climate may do away with this difficulty for you. Is he alone there?' 'Yes,'
answered the manager; 'he sent his assistant down the river with a note to me in these terms:
"Clear this poor devil out of the country, and don't bother sending more of that sort. I had
rather be alone than have the kind of men you can dispose of with me." It was more than a
year ago. Can you im- agine such impudence!' 'Anything since then?' asked the other hoarsely.
'Ivory,' jerked the nephew; 'lots of it -- prime sort -- lots -- most annoying, from him.' 'And
with that?' questioned the heavy rumble. 'In- voice,' was the reply fired out, so to speak. Then
si- lence. They had been talking about Kurtz.

"I was broad awake by this time, but, lying per- fectly at ease, remained still, having no
inducement to change my position. 'How did that ivory come all this way?' growled the elder
man, who seemed very vexed. The other explained that it had come with a fleet of canoes in
charge of an English half-caste clerk Kurtz had with him; that Kurtz had apparently intended to
return himself, the station being by that time bare of goods and stores, but after coming three
hundred miles, had suddenly decided to go back, which he started to do alone in a small
dugout with four paddlers, leaving the half-caste to continue down the river with the ivory. The
two fellows there seemed astounded at anybody attempting such a thing. They were at a loss
for an adequate motive. As to me, I seemed to see Kurtz for the first time. It was a distinct
glimpse: the dugout, four paddling savages, and the lone white man turning his back suddenly
on the headquarters, on relief, on thoughts of home -- per- haps; setting his face towards the
depths of the wil- derness, towards his empty and desolate station. I did not know the motive.
Perhaps he was just simply a fine fellow who stuck to his work for its own sake. His name,
you understand, had not been pronounced once. He was 'that man.' The half caste, who, as far
as I could see, had conducted a difficult trip with great prudence and pluck, was invariably
alluded to as 'that scoundrel.' The 'scoundrel' had reported that the 'man' had been very ill --
had recovered imper- fectly.... The two below me moved away then a few paces, and strolled
back and forth at some little distance. I heard: 'Military post -- doctor -- two hun- dred miles
-- quite alone now -- unavoidable delays -- nine months -- no news -- strange rumours.' They
ap- proached again, just as the manager was saying, 'No one, as far as I know, unless a
species of wandering trader -- a pestilential fellow, snapping ivory from the natives.' Who was
it they were talking about now? I gathered in snatches that this was some man supposed to be
in Kurtz's district, and of whom the manager did not approve. 'We will not be free from unfair
competition till one of these fellows is hanged for an example,' he said. 'Certainly,' grunted the
other; 'get him hanged! Why not? Anything -- anything can be done in this country. That's what
I say; nobody here, you understand, here, can endanger your position. And why? You stand
the climate -- you outlast them all. The danger is in Europe; but there before I left I took care
to --' They moved off and whispered, then their voices rose again. 'The extraordinary series of
delays is not my fault. I did my best.' The fat man sighed. 'Very sad.' 'And the pestiferous
absurdity of his talk,' continued the other; 'he bothered me enough when he was here. "Each
station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a centre for trade of course,
but also for humanizing, improving, instructing." Conceive you -- that ass! And he wants to be
manager! No, it's --' Here he got choked by excessive indignation, and I lifted my head the
least bit. I was surprised to see how near they were -- right under me. I could have spat upon
their hats. They were looking on the ground, absorbed in thought. The manager was switching
his leg with a slender twig: his sagacious relative lifted his head. 'You have been well since you
came out this time?' he asked. The other gave a start. 'Who? I? Oh! Like a charm -- like a
charm. But the rest -- oh, my goodness! All sick. They die so quick, too, that I haven't the time
to send them out of the country -- it's incredible!' 'H'm. Just so,' grunted the uncle. 'Ah! my
boy, trust to this -- I say, trust to this.' I saw him extend his short flipper of an arm for a gesture
that took in the forest, the creek, the mud, the river -- seemed to beckon with a dishonouring
flourish before the sunlit face of the land a treacherous appeal to the lurking death, to the
hidden evil, to the profound darkness of its heart. It was so startling that I leaped to my feet
and looked back at the edge of the forest, as though I had expected an answer of some sort to
that black display of confidence. You know the foolish notions that come to one sometimes.
The high stillness con- fronted these two figures with its ominous patience, waiting for the
passing away of a fantastic invasion.

"They swore aloud together -- out of sheer fright, I believe -- then pretending not to know
anything of my existence, turned back to the station. The sun was low; and leaning forward
side by side, they seemed to be tugging painfully uphill their two ridiculous shadows of unequal
length, that trailed behind them slowly over the tall grass without bending a single blade.

"In a few days the Eldorado Expedition went into the patient wilderness, that dosed upon it as
the sea closes over a diver. Long afterwards the news came that all the donkeys were dead. I
know nothing as to the fate of the less valuable animals. They, no doubt, like the rest of us,
found what they deserved. I did not inquire. I was then rather excited at the prospect of
meeting Kurtz very soon. When I say very soon I mean it comparatively. It was just two
months from the day we left the creek when we came to the bank below Kurtz's station.

"Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when
vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence,
an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the
brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of
over-shadowed distances. On silvery sandbanks hippos and alligators sunned themselves side
by side. The broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands; you lost your way
on that river as you would in a desert, and butted all day long against shoals, trying to find the
channel, till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had
known once -- somewhere -- far away -- in another existence perhaps. There were moments
when one's past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare
to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder
amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence. And
this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable
force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect. I got used
to it afterwards; I did not see it any more; I had no time. I had to keep guessing at the channel;
I had to discern, mostly by inspiration, the signs of hidden banks; I watched for sunken stones;
I was learning to clap my teeth smartly before my heart flew out, when I shaved by a fluke
some infernal sly old snag that would have ripped the life out of the tin-pot steamboat and
drowned all the pilgrims; I had to keep a lookout for the signs of dead wood we could cut up
in the night for next day's steaming. When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere
incidents of the surface, the reality -- the reality, I tell you -- fades. The inner truth is hid- den
-- luckily, luckily. But I felt it all the same; I felt often its mysterious stillness watching me at my
monkey tricks, just as it watches you fellows perform- ing on your respective tight-ropes for --
what is it? half-a-crown a tumble --"

"Try to be civil, Marlow," growled a voice, and I knew there was at least one listener awake
besides myself.

"I beg your pardon. I forgot the heartache which makes up the rest of the price. And indeed
what does the price matter, if the trick be well done? You do your tricks very well. And I
didn't do badly either, since I managed not to sink that steamboat on my first trip. It's a wonder
to me yet. Imagine a blindfolded man set to drive a van over a bad road. I sweated and
shivered over that business considerably, I can tell you. After all, for a seaman, to scrape the
bottom of the thing that's supposed to float all the time under his care is the unpardonable sin.
No one may know of it, but you never forget the thump -- eh? A blow on the very heart. You
remember it, you dream of it, you wake up at night and think of it -- years after -- and go hot
and cold all over. I don't pretend to say that steamboat floated all the time. More than once
she had to wade for a bit, with twenty cannibals splashing around and pushing. We had
enlisted some of these chaps on the way for a crew. Fine fellows -- cannibals -- in their place.
They were men one could work with, and I am grateful to them. And, after all, they did not eat
each other before my face: they had brought along a provision of hippo-meat which went
rotten, and made the mystery of the wilderness stink in my nostrils. Phoo! I can sniff it now. I
had the manager on board and three or four pilgrims with their staves -- all complete.
Sometimes we came upon a station close by the bank, clinging to the skirts of the un- known,
and the white men rushing out of a tumble- down hovel, with great gestures of joy and surprise
and welcome, seemed very strange -- had the appear- ance of being held there captive by a
spell. The word ivory would ring in the air for a while -- and on we went again into the silence,
along empty reaches, round the still bends, between the high walls of our winding way,
reverberating in hollow claps the pon- derous beat of the stern-wheel. Trees, trees, millions of
trees, massive, immense, running up high; and at their foot, hugging the bank against the stream,
crept the little begrimed steamboat, like a sluggish beetle crawling on the floor of a lofty
portico. It made you feel very small, very lost, and yet it was not alto- gether depressing, that
feeling. After all, if you were small, the grimy beetle crawled on -- which was just what you
wanted it to do. Where the pilgrims im- agined it crawled to I don't know. To some place
where they expected to get something. I bet! For me it crawled towards Kurtz -- exclusively;
but when the steam-pipes started leaking we crawled very slow. The reaches opened before
us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for
our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet
there. At night sometimes the roll of drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river
and remain sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air high over our heads, till the first break of
day. Whether it meant war, peace, or prayer we could not tell. The dawns were heralded by
the descent of a chill stillness; the wood-cutters slept, their fires burned low; the snap- ping of a
twig would make you start. We were wan- derers 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 ac- cursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of pro- found anguish and
of excessive toil. But suddenly, as we struggled round a bend, there would be a glimpse of rush
walls, of peaked grass-roofs, a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clap-
ping, 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 prehis- toric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us --
who could tell? We were cut off from the compre- hension of our surroundings; we glided past
like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic
outbreak in a madhouse. We could not understand because we were too far and could not
remember because we were travelling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone,
leaving hardly a sign -- and no memories.

"The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a
conquered mon- ster, but there -- there you could look at a thing mon- strous and free. It was
unearthly, and the men were -- No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the
worst of it -- this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They
howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the
thought of their humanity -- like yours -- the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and
passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would
admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frank-
ness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you -- you so remote
from the night of first ages -- could comprehend. And why not? The mind of man is capable of
anything -- because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after
all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage -- who can tell? -- but truth -- truth stripped of its
cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder -- the man knows, and can look on without a
wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore. He must meet that truth
with his own true stuff -- with his own inborn strength. Princi- ples won't do. Acquisitions,
clothes, pretty rags -- rags that would fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate
belief. An appeal to me in this fiend- ish row -- is there? Very well; I hear; I admit, but I have a
voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced. Of course, a fool,
what with sheer fright and fine sentiments, is always safe. Who's that grunting? You wonder I
didn't go ashore for a howl and a dance? Well, no -- I didn't. Fine sentiments, you say? Fine
sentiments, be hanged! I had no time. I had to mess about with white-lead and strips of woolen
blanket helping to put bandages on those leaky steampipes -- I tell you. I had to watch the
steering, and circumvent those snags, and get the tin-pot along by hook or by crook. There
was surface- truth enough in these things to save a wiser man. And between whiles I had to
look after the savage who was fireman. He was an improved specimen; he could fire up a
vertical boiler. He was there below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as
seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on his hindlegs. A few months
of training had done for that really fine chap. He squinted at the steam-gauge and at the
water-guage with an evident effort of intrepidity -- and he had filed teeth, too, the poor devil,
and the wool of his pate shaved into queer patterns, and three orna- mental scars on each of
his cheeks. He ought to have been clapping his hands and stamping his feet on the bank,
instead of which he was hard at work, a thrall to strange witchcraft, full of improving
knowledge. He was useful because he had been instructed; and what he knew was this -- that
should the water in that trans- parent thing disappear, the evil spirit inside the boiler would get
angry through the greatness of his thirst, and take a terrible vengeance. So he sweated and
watched the glass fearfully (with an impromptu charm, made of rags, tied to his arm, and a
piece of polished bone, as big as a watch, stuck flatways through his lower lip), while the
wooded banks slipped past us slowly, the short noise was left behind, the inter- minable miles
of silence -- and we crept on, towards Kurtz. But the snags were thick, the water was treach-
erous and shallow, the boiler seemed indeed to have a sulky devil in it, and thus neither that
fireman nor I had any time to peer into our creepy thoughts.

"Some fifty miles below the Inner Station we came upon a hut of reeds, an inclined and
melancholy pole, with the unrecognizable tatters of what had been a flag of some sort flying
from it, and a neatly stacked woodpile. This was unexpected. We came to the bank, and on
the stack of firewood found a flat piece of board with some faded pencil-writing on it. When
de- ciphered it said: 'Wood for you. Hurry up. Approach cautiously.' There was a signature,
but it was illegible -- not Kurtz -- a much longer word. 'Hurry up.' Where? Up the river?
'Approach cautiously.' We had not done so. But the warning could not have been meant for
the place where it could be only found after approach. Something was wrong above. But what
-- and how much? That was the question. We commented adversely upon the imbecility of that
telegraphic style. The bush around said nothing, and would not let us look very far either. A
torn curtain of red twill hung in the doorway of the hut, and flapped sadly in our faces. The
dwelling was dis- mantled; 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 extraodi- nary find. Its title was,
An Inquiry snto some Points of Seamanship, by a man Towser, Towson -- some such name --
Master in his Majesty's Navy. The matter looked dreary reading enough, with illustrative dia-
grams 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 enthrailing 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, lumi- nous 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 deli- cious sensation of having come upon something unmis-
takably real. Such a book being there was wonderful enough but still more astounding were the
notes pen- cilled in the margin, and plainly referring to the text. I couldn't believe my eyes!
They were in cipher! Yes, it looked like cipher. Fancy a man lugging with him a book of that
description into this nowhere and studying it -- and making notes -- in cipher at that! It was an
extravagant mystery.

"I had been dimly aware for some time of a worry- ing noise, and when I lifted my eyes I saw
the wood- pile was gone, and the manager, aided by all the pil- grims, was shouting at me from
the riverside. I slipped the book into my pocket. I assure you to leave off reading was like
tearing myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship.

"I started the lame engine ahead. 'It must be this miserable trader -- this intruder,' exclaimed
the man- ager, 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 as- sumed innocence that no man was safe from trouble in this world.

"The current was more rapid now, the steamer seemed at her last gasp, the stern-wheel
flopped lan- guidly, and I caught myself listening on tiptoe for the next beat of the boat, for in
sober truth I expected the wretched thing to give up every moment. It was like watching the
last flickers of a life. But still we crawled. Sometimes I would pick out a tree a little way ahead
to measure our progress towards Kurtz by, but I lost it invariably before we got abreast. To
keep the eyes so long on one thing was too much for human patience. The manager displayed
a beautiful resignation. I fretted and fumed and took to arguing with myself whether or no I
would talk openly with Kurtz; but before I could come to any conclusion it occurred to me that
my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility. What did it
matter what any one knew or ignored? What did it matter who was manager? One gets
sometimes such a flash of insight. The essentials of this affair lay deep under the surface,
beyond my reach, and beyond my power of meddling.

"Towards the evening of the second day we judged ourselves about eight miles from Kurtz's
station. I wanted to push on; but the manager looked grave, and told me the navigation up
there was so dangerous that it would be advisable, the sun being very low already, to wait
where we were till next morning. Moreover, he pointed out that if the warning to ap- proach
cautiously were to be followed, we must ap- proach 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 immo- bility sat on the banks. The living trees, lashed to- gether by the
creepers and every living bush of the undergrowth, might have been changed into stone, even
to the slenderest twig, to the lightest leaf. It was not sleep -- it seemed unnatural, like a state of
trance. Not the faintest sound of any kind could be heard. You looked on amazed, and began
to suspect yourself of being deaf-- then the night came sud- denly, and struck you blind as
well. About three in the morning some large fish leaped, and the loud splash made me jump as
though a gun had been fired. When the sun rose there was a white fog, very warm and
clammy, and more blinding than the night. It did not shift or drive; it was just there, standing all
round you like something solid. At eight or nine, perhaps, it lifted as a shutter lifts. We had a
glimpse of the towering multitude of trees, of the immense matted jungle, with the blazing little
ball of the sun hanging over it -- all perfectly still -- and then the white shutter came down
again, smoothly, as if sliding in greased grooves. I ordered the chain, which we had begun to
heave in, to be paid out again. Before it stopped run- ning with a muffled rattle, a cry, a very
loud cry, as of infinite desolation, soared slowly in the opaque air. It ceased. A complaining
clamour, modulated in savage discords, filled our ears. The sheer unexpectedness of it made
my hair stir under my cap. I don't know how it struck the others: to me it seemed as though the
mist itself had screamed, so suddenly, and apparently from all sides at once, did this tumultuous
and mourn- ful uproar arise. It culminated in a hurried outbreak of almost intolerably escessive
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 py- jamas tucked into his socks. Two others
remained open-mouthed a whole minute, then dashed into the little cabin, to rush out
incontinently and stand dart- ing scared glances, with Winchesters at 'ready' in their hands.
What we could see was just the steamer we were on, her outlines blurred as though she had
been on the point of dissolving, and a misty strip of water, perhaps two feet broad, around her
-- and that was all. The rest of the world was nowhere, as far as our eyes and ears were
concerned. Just nowhere. Gone, disappeared; swept off without leaving a whisper or a
shadow behind.

"I went forward, and ordered the chain to be hauled in short, so as to be ready to trip the
anchor and move the steamboat at once if necessary. 'Will they attack?' whispered an awed
voice. 'We will be all butchered in this fog,' murmured another. The faces twitched with the
strain, the hands trembled slightly, the eyes forgot to wink. It was very curious to see the
contrast of expressions of the white men and of the black fellows of our crew, who were as
much strangers to that part of the river as we, though their homes were only eight hundred
miles away. The whites, of course greatly discomposed, had be- sides a curious look of being
painfully shocked by such an outrageous row. The others had an alert, naturally interested
expression; but their faces were essentially quiet, even those of the one or two who grinned as
they hauled at the chain. Several exchanged short, grunting phrases, which seemed to settle the
matter to their satisfaction. Their headman, a young, broad- chested black, severely draped in
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 pro- foundly pensive attitude. I would no
doubt have been properly horrified, had it not occurred to me that he and his chaps must be
very hungry: that they must have been growing increasingly hungry for at least this month past.
They had been engaged for six months (I don't think a single one of them had any clear idea of
time, as we at the end of countless ages have. They still belonged to the beginnings of time --
had no inherited experience to teach them as it were), and of course, as long as there was a
piece of paper written over in accordance with some farcical law or other made down the
river, it didn't enter anybody's head to trouble how they would live. Certainly they had brought
with them some rotten hippo-meat, which couldn't have lasted very long, anyway, even if the
pilgrims hadn't, in the midst of a shocking hullabaloo, thrown a considerable quantity of it
overboard. It looked like a high-handed proceeding; but it was really a case of legitimate
self-defence. You can't breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping, and eating, and at the same time
keep your precarious grip on exist- ence. Besides that, they had given them every week three
pieces of brass wire, each about nine inches long; and the theory was they were to buy their
provisions with that currency in riverside villages. You can see how that worked. There were
either no villages, or the people were hostile, or the director, who like the rest of us fed out of
tins, with an occasional old he-goat thrown in, didn't want to stop the steamer for some more
or less recondite reason. So, unless they swal- lowed the wire itself, or made loops of it to
snare the fishes with, I don't see what good their extravagant salary could be to them. I must
say it was paid with a regularity worthy of a large and honourable trading company. For the
rest, the only thing to eat -- though it didn't look eatable in the least -- I saw in their pos-
session was a few lumps of some stuff like half-cooked dough, of a dirty lavender colour, they
kept wrapped in leaves, and now and then swallowed a piece of, but so small that it seemed
done more for the looks of the thing than for any serious purpose of sustenance. Why in the
name of all the gnawing devils of hunger they didn't go for us -- they were thirty to five -- and
have a good tuck-in for once, amazes me now when I think of it. They were big powerful men,
with not much capacity to weigh the consequences, with cour- age, with strength, even yet,
though their skins were no longer glossy and their muscles no longer hard. And I saw that
something restraining, one of those human secrets that baffle probability, had come into play
there. I looked at them with a swift quickening of interest -- not because it occurred to me I
might be eaten by them before very long, though I own to you that just then I perceived -- in a
new light, as it were -- how unwholesome the pilgrims looked, and I hoped, yes, I positively
hoped, that my aspect was not so -- what shall I say? -- so -- unappetizing: a touch of fantastic
vanity which fitted well with the dream-sen- sation that pervaded all my days at that time.
Perhaps I had a little fever, too. One can't live with one's finger everlastingly on one's pulse. I
had often 'a little fever,' or a little touch of other things -- the playful paw-strokes of the
wilderness, the preliminary trifling before the more serious onslaught which came in due course.
Yes; I looked at them as you would on any human being, with a curiosity of their impulses,
motives, capacities, weaknesses, when brought to the test of an inexorable physical necessity.
Restraint! What possible restraint? Was it superstition, disgust, patience, fear -- or some kind
of primitive honour? No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust
simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call
princi- ples, they are less than chaff in a breeze. Don't you know the devilry of lingering
starvation, its exasperat- ing torment, its black thoughts, its sombre and brood- ing ferocity?
Well, I do. It takes a man all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly. It's really easier to
face bereavement, dishonour, and the perdition of one's soul -- than this kind of prolonged
hunger. Sad, but true. And these chaps, too, had no earthly reason for any kind of scruple.
Restraint! I would just as soon have expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the
corpses of a battlefield. But there was the fact facing me -- the fact dazzling, to be seen, like
the foam on the depths of the sea, like a ripple on an un- fathomable enigma, a mystery greater
-- when I thought of it -- than the curious, inexplicable note of desperate grief in this savage
clamour that had swept by us on the river-bank, behind the blind whiteness of the fog.

"Two pilgrims were quarrelling in hurried whis- pers 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 re- straint. But when he muttered something about going
on at once, I did not even take the trouble to answer him. I knew, and he knew, that it was
impossible. Were we to let go our hold of the bottom, we would be absolutely in the air -- in
space. We wouldn't be able to tell where we were going to -- whether up or down stream, or
across -- till we fetched against one bank or the other -- and then we wouldn't know at first
which it was. Of course I made no move. I had no mind for a smash-up. You couldn't imagine
a more deadly place for a shipwreck. Whether 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 dan-
gers 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 impene- trable -- and yet eyes were in it,
eyes that had seen us. The riverside bushes were certainly very thick; but the undergrowth
behind was evidently penetrable. However, during the short lift I had seen no canoes anywhere
in the reach -- certainly not abreast of the steamer. But what made the idea of attack
inconceiv- able to me was the nature of the noise -- of the cries we had heard. They had not
the fierce character boding immediate hostile intention. Unexpected, wild, and violent as they
had been, they had given me an irresistible impression of sorrow. The glimpse of the steamboat
had for some reason filled those savages with unrestrained grief. The danger, if any, I
expounded, was from our proximity to a great human passion let loose. Even extreme grief
may ul- timately vent itself in violence -- but more generally takes the form of apathy....

"You should have seen the pilgrims stare! They had no heart to grin, or even to revile me: but I
be- lieve they thought me gone mad -- with fright, maybe. I delivered a regular lecture. My
dear boys, it was no good bothering. Keep a lookout? Well, you may guess I watched the fog
for the signs of lifting as a cat watches a mouse; but for anything else our eyes were of no more
use to us than if we had been buried miles deep in a heap of cotton-wool. It feIt like it, too --
choking, warm, stifling. Besides, all I said, though it sounded extravagant, was absolutely true
to fact. What we afterwards alluded to as an attack was really an attempt at repulse. The
action was very far from being aggressive -- it was not even defensive, in the usual sense: it
was undertaken under the stress of desperation, and in its essence was purely protective.

"It developed itself, I should say, two hours after the fog lifted, and its commencement was at a
spot, roughly speaking, about a mile and a half below Kurtz's station. We had just floundered
and flopped round a bend, when I saw an islet, a mere grassy hum- mock of bright green, in
the middle of the stream. It was the only thing of the kind; but as we opened the reach more, I
perceived it was the head of a long sand-bank, or rather of a chain of shallow patches
stretching down the middle of the river. They were discoloured, just awash, and the whole lot
was seen just under the water, exactly as a man's backbone is seen running down the middle of
his back under the skin. Now, as far as I did see, I could go to the right or to the left of this. I
didn't know either channel, of course. The banks looked pretty well alike, the depth appeared
the same; but as I had been informed the station was on the west side, I naturally headed for
the western passage.

"No sooner had we fairly entered it than I became aware it was much narrower than I had
supposed. To the left of us there was the long uninterrupted shoal, and to the right a high, steep
bank heavily overgrown with bushes. Above the bush the trees stood in serried ranks. The
twigs overhung the current thickly, and from distance to distance a large limb of some tree
projected rigidly over the stream. It was then well on in the afternoon, the face of the forest
was gloomy, and a broad strip of shadow had already fallen on the water. In this shadow we
steamed up -- very slowly, as you may imagine. I sheered her well inshore -- the water being
deepest near the bank, as the sounding- pole informed me.

"One of my hungry and forbearing friends was sounding in the bows just below me. This
steamboat was exactly like a decked scow. On the deck, there were two little teakwood
houses, with doors and win- dows. The boiler was in the fore-end, and the ma- chinery right
astern. Over the whole there was a light roof, supported on stanchions. The funnel projected
through that roof, and in front of the funnel a small cabin built of light planks served for a
pilot-house. It contained a couch, two camp-stools, a loaded Martini- Henry leaning in one
corner, a tiny table, and the steering-wheel. It had a wide door in front and a broad shutter at
each side. All these were always thrown open, of course. I spent my days perched up there on
the extreme fore-end of that roof, before the door. At night I slept, or tried to, on the couch.
An athletic black belonging to some coast tribe and edu- cated by my poor predecessor, was
the helmsman. He sported a pair of brass earrings, wore a blue cloth wrapper from the waist
to the ankles, and thought all the world of himself. He was the most unstable kind of fool I had
ever seen. He steered with no end of a swagger while you were by; but if he lost sight of you,
he became instantly the prey of an abject funk, and would let that cripple of a steamboat get
the upper hand of him in a minute.

"I was looking down at the sounding-pole, and feeling much annoyed to see at each try a little
more of it stick out of that river, when I saw my poleman give up the business suddenly, and
stretch himself flat on the deck, without even taking the trouble to haul his pole in. He kept hold
on it though, and it trailed in the water. At the same time the fireman, whom I could also see
below me, sat down abruptly before his furnace and ducked his head. I was amazed. Then I
had to look at the river mighty quick, because there was a snag in the fairway. Sticks, little
sticks, were flying about -- thick: they were whizzing before my nose, dropping below me,
striking behind me against my pilot-house. All this time the river, the shore, the woods, were
very quiet -- perfectly quiet. I could only hear the heavy splashing thump of the stern-wheel
and the patter of these things. We cleared the snag clumsily. Arrows, by Jove! We were being
shot at! I stepped in quickly to close the shutter on the land- side. That fool-helmsman, his
hands on the spokes, was lifting his knees high, stamping his feet, champing his mouth, like a
reined-in horse. Confound him! And we were staggering within ten feet of the bank. I had to
lean right out to swing the heavy shutter, and I saw a face amongst the leaves on the level with
my own, looking at me very fierce and steady; and then suddenly, as though a veil had been
removed from my eyes, I made out, deep in the tangled gloom, naked breasts, arms, legs,
glaring eyes -- the bush was swarming with human limbs in movement, glistening, of bronze
colour. The twigs shook, swayed, and rustled, the arrows flew out of them, and then the
shutter came to. 'Steer her straight,' I said to the helmsman. He held his head rigid, face
forward; but his eyes rolled, he kept on lifting and setting down his feet gently, his mouth
foamed a little. 'Keep quiet!' I said in a fury. I might just as well have ordered a tree not to
sway in the wind. I darted out. Below me there was a great scuffle of feet on the iron deck;
confused exclamations; a voice screamed, 'Can you turn back?' I caught sight of a V-shaped
ripple on the water ahead. What? Another snag! A fusillade burst out under my feet. The
pilgrims had opened with their Winchesters, and were simply squirting lead into that bush. A
deuce of a lot of smoke came up and drove slowly forward. I swore at it. Now I couldn't see
the ripple or the snag either. I stood in the doorway, peering, and the arrows came in swarms.
They might have been poisoned, but they looked as though they wouldn't kill a cat. The bush
began to howl. Our wood-cutters raised a warlike whoop; the report of a rifle just at my back
deafened me. I glanced over my shoulder, and the pilot-house was yet full of noise and smoke
when I made a dash at the wheel. The fool-nigger had dropped everything, to throw the shutter
open and let off that Martini-Henry. He stood before the wide opening, glaring, and I yelled at
him to come back, while I straightened the sudden twist out of that steamboat. There was no
room to turn even if I had wanted to, the snag was somewhere very near ahead in that
confounded smoke, there was no time to lose, so I just crowded her into the bank -- right into
the bank, where I knew the water was deep. "We tore slowly along the overhanging bushes in
a whirl of broken twigs and flying leaves. The fusil- lade below stopped short, as I had
foreseen it would when the squirts got empty. I threw my head back to a glinting whizz that
traversed the pilot-house, in at one shutter-hole and out at the other. Looking past that mad
helmsman, who was shaking the empty rifle and yelling at the shore, I saw vague forms of men
run- ning bent double, leaping, gliding, distinct, incom- plete, 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 man- ner, and
fell upon my feet. The side of his head hit the wheel twice, and the end of what appeared a
long cane clattered round and knocked over a little camp- stool. It looked as though after
wrenching that thing from somebody ashore he had lost his balance in the effort. The thin
smoke had blown away, we were clear of the snag, and looking ahead I could see that in
another hundred yards or so I would be free to sheer off, away from the bank; but my feet felt
so very warm and wet that I had to look down. The man had rolled on his back and stared
straight up at me; both his hands clutched that cane. It was the shaft of a spear that, either
thrown or lunged through the open- ing, had caught him in the side just below the ribs; the
blade had gone in out of sight, after making a frightful gash; my shoes were full; a pool of blood
lay very still, gleaming dark-red under the wheel; his eyes shone with an amazing lustre. The
fusillade burst out again. He looked at me anxiously, gripping the spear like something
precious, with an air of being afraid I would try to take it away from him. I had to make an
effort to free my eyes from his gaze and attend to the steering. With one hand I felt above my
head for the line of the steam whistle, and jerked out screech after screech hurriedly. The
tumult of angry and warlike yells was checked instantly, and then from the depths of the woods
went out such a tremulous and prolonged wail of mournful fear and utter despair as may be
imagined to follow the flight of the last hope from the earth. There was a great commotion in
the bush; the shower of arrows stopped, a few drop- ping shots rang out sharply -- then
silence, in which the languid beat of the stern-wheel came plainly to my ears. I put the helm
hard a-starboard at the mo- ment 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
death-mask an inconceivably sombre, brooding, and menacing expression. The lustre of
inquiring glance faded swiftly into vacant glassiness. 'Can you steer?' I asked the agent eagerly.
He looked very dubious; but I made a grab at his arm, and he understood at once I meant him
to steer whether or no. To tell you the truth, I was morbidly anxious to change my shoes and
socks. 'He is dead,' murmured the fellow, immensely impressed. 'No doubt about it,' said I,
tugging like mad at the shoe laces. 'And by the way, I suppose Mr. Kurtz is dead as well by
this time.'

"For the moment that was the dominant thought. There was a sense of extreme
disappointment, as though I had found out I had been striving after some- thing altogether
without a substance. I couldn't have been more disgusted if I had travelled all this way for the
sole purpose of talking with Mr. Kurtz. Talk- ing with . . . I flung one shoe overboard, and
became aware that that was exactly what I had been looking forward to -- a talk with Kurtz. I
made the strange discovery that I had never imagined him as doing, you know, but as
discoursing. I didn't say to myself, 'Now I will never see him,' or 'Now I will never shake him
by the hand,' but, 'Now I will never hear him.' The man presented himself as a voice. Not of
course that I did not connect him with some sort of action. Hadn't I been told in all the tones of
jealousy and admiration that he had collected, bartered, swindled, or stolen more ivory than all
the other agents to- gether? That was not the point. The point was in his being a gifted
creature, and that of all his gifts the one that stood out preeminently, that carried with it a sense
of real presence, was his ability to talk, his words -- the gift of expression, the bewildering, the
illuminating, the most exalted and the most con- temptible, the pulsating stream of light, or the
deceit- ful flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness.

"The other shoe went flying unto the devil-god of that river. I thought, 'By Jove! it's all over.
We are too late; he has vanished -- the gift has vanished, by means of some spear, arrow, or
club. I will never hear that chap speak after all' -- and my sorrow had a star- tling
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 lite.... 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 profourd stillness, then a match flared, and Marlow's lean face
appeared, worn, hollow, with downward folds and dropped eyelids, with an aspect of
concentrated abtention; and as he took vigorous draws at his pipe, it seemed to retreat and
advance out of the night in the regular flicker of tiny flame. The match went out.

"Absurd!" he cried. "This is the worst of trying to tell.... Here you all are, each moored with
two good addresses, like a hulk with two anchors, a butcher round one corner, a policeman
round another, excel- lent appetites, and temperature normal -- you hear -- normal from year's
end to year~s end. And you say, Absurd! Absurd be -- exploded! Absurd! My dear boys,
what can you expect from a man who out of sheer nervousness had just flung overboard a pair
of new shoes! Now I think of it, it is amazing I did not shed tears. I am, upon the whole, proud
of my forti- tude. I was cut to the quick at the idea of having lost the inestimable privilege of
listening to the gifted Kurtz. Of course I was wrong. The privilege was waiting for me. Oh, yes,
I heard more than enough. And I was right, too. A voice. He was very little more than a voice.
And I heard -- him -- it -- this voice -- other voices -- all of them were so little more than
voices -- and the memory of that time itself lingers around me, impalpable, like a dying
vibration of one immense jabber, silly, atrocious, sordid, savage, or simply mean, without any
kind of sense. Voices, voices -- even the girl herself -- now --"

He was silent for a long time.

"I laid the ghost of his gifts at last with a lie," he began, suddenly. "Girl! What? Did I mention a
girl? Oh, she is out of it -- completely. They -- the women I mean -- are out of it -- should be
out of it. We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours gets worse.
Oh, she had to be out of it. You should have heard the disinterred body of Mr. Kurtz saying,
'My Intended.' You would have perceived directly then how completely she was out of it. And
the lofty frontal bone of Mr. Kurtz! They say the hair goes on growing sometimes, but this --
ah -- speci- men, was impressively bald. The wilderness had patted him on the head, and,
behold, it was like a ball -- an ivory ball; it had caressed him, and -- lo! -- he had withered; it
had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his
soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation. He was its spoiled
and pam- pered favourite. Ivory? I should think so. Heaps of it, stacks of it. The old mud
shanty was bursting with it. You would think there was not a single tusk left either above or
below the ground in the whole country. 'Mostly fossil,' the manager had remarked,
disparagingly. It was no more fossil than I am; but they call it fossil when it is dug up. It
appears these niggers do bury the tusks sometimes -- but evidently they couldn't bury this
parcel deep enough to save the gifted Mr. Kurtz from his fate. We filled the steam- boat with
it, and had to pile a lot on the deck. Thus he could see and enjoy as long as he could see,
because the appreciation of this favour had remained with him to the last. You should have
heard him say, 'My ivory.' Oh, yes, I heard him. 'My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river,
my --' everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the
wilderness burst into a prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their
places. Everything belonged to him -- but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he
belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own. That was the reflection
that made you creepy all over. It was impossible -- it was not good for one either -- trying to
imagine. He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land -- I mean literally. You can't
understand. How could you? -- with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind
neighbours ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping deli- cately between the butcher and
the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums -- how can you
imagine what particular region of the first ages a man's untrammelled feet may take him into by
the way of solitude -- utter solitude without a policeman -- by the way of silence -- utter
silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbour can be heard whispering of public
opinion? These little things make all the great difference. When they are gone you must fall
back upon your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness. Of course you
may be too much of a fool to go wrong -- too dull even to know you are being assulted by the
powers of darkness. I take it, no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the devil; the fool is
too much of a fool, or the devil too much of a devil -- I don't know which. Or you may be
such a thunderingly exalted creature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly
sights and sounds. Then the earth for you is only a standing place -- and whether to be like this
is your loss or your gain I won't pretend to say. But most of us are neither one nor the other.
The earth for us is a place to live in, where we must put up with sights, with sounds, with
smells, too, by Jove! -- breathe dead hippo, so to speak, and not be contaminated. And there,
don't you see? Your strength comes in, the faith in your ability for the digging of unostentatious
holes to bury the stuff in -- your power of devotion, not to yourself, but to an obscure
back-breaking busi- ness. And that's difficult enough. Mind, I am not trying to excuse or even
explain -- I am trying to ac- count to myself for -- for -- Mr. Kurtz -- for the shade of Mr.
Kurtz. This initiated wraith from the back of Nowhere honoured me with its amazing
confidence before it vanished altogether. This was because it could speak English to me. The
original Kurtz had been educated partly in England, and -- as he was good enough to say
himself -- his sympathies were in the right place. His mother was half-English, his father was
half-French. All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz; and by and by I learned that, most
appropriately, the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs had intrusted
him with the making of a report, for its future guid- ance. And he had written it, too. I've seen
it. I've read it. It was eloquent, vibrating with eloquence, but too high-strung, I think. Seventeen
pages of close writing he had found time for! But this must have been before his -- let us say --
nerves, went wrong, and caused him to preside at certain midnight dances ending with
unspeakable rites, which -- as far as I reluctantly gathered from what I heard at various times
-- were offered up to him -- do you under- stand? -- to Mr. Kurtz himself. But it was a
beautiful piece of writing. The opening paragraph, however, in the light of later information,
strikes me now as ominous. He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of
development we had arrived at, 'must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of
supernatural beings -- we approach them with the might 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,' etc.,
etc. From that point he soared and took me with him. The peroration was magnificent, though
difficult to remember, you know. It gave me the notion of an exotic Immensity ruled by an
august Benevolence. It made me tingle with enthusiasm. This was the unbounded power of
eloquence -- of words -- of burning noble words. There were no practical hints to interrupt the
magic current of phrases, unless a kind of note at the foot of the last page, scrawled evidently
much later, in an unsteady hand, may be regarded as the exposition of a method. It was very
simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you,
luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: 'Exterminate all the brutes!' The
curious part was that he had apparently forgotten all about that valuable postscriptum,
because, later on, when he in a sense came to himself, he repeatedly entreated me to take
good care of 'my pamphlet' (he called it), as it was sure to have in the future a good influence
upon his career. I had full information about all these things, and, besides, as it turned out, I
was to have the care of his memory. I've done enough for it to give me the indisputable right to
lay it, if I choose, for an everlasting rest in the dust-bin of progress, amongst all the sweepings
and, figuratively speaking, all the dead cats of civilization. But then, you see, I can't choose. He
won't be forgotten. Whatever he was, he was not common. He had the power to charm or
frighten rudimentary souls into an aggravated witch-dance in his honour; he could also fill the
small souls of the pilgrims with bitter misgivings: he had one devoted friend at least, and he had
conquered one soul in the world that was neither rudimentary nor tainted with self-seeking.
No; I can't forget him, though I am not prepared to affirm the fellow was exactly worth the life
we lost in getting to him. I missed my late helmsman awfully -- I missed him even while his
body was still lying in the pilot-house. Perhaps you will think it passing strange this regret for a
savage who was no more account than a grain of sand in a black Sahara. Well, don't you see,
he had done something, he had steered; for months I had him at my back -- a help -- an
instrument. It was a kind of partnership. He steered for me -- I had to look after him, I worried
about his deficiencies, and thus a subtle bond had been created, of which I only became aware
when it was suddenly broken. And the intimate pro- fundity of that look he gave me when he
received his hurt remains to this day in my memory -- like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in
a supreme moment.

"Poor fool! If he had only left that shutter alone. He had no restraint, no restraint just like Kurtz
-- a tree swayed by the wind. As soon as I had put on a dry pair of slippers, I dragged him
out, after first jerking the spear out of his side, which operation I confess I performed with my
eyes shut tight. His heels leaped together over the little doorstep; his shoulders were pressed to
my breast; I hugged him from behind des- perately. Oh! he was heavy, heavy; heavier than any
man on earth, I should imagine. Then without more ado I tipped him overboard. The current
snatched him as though he had been a wisp of grass, and I saw the body roll over twice before
I lost sight of it for ever. All the pilgrims and the manager were then congregated on the
awning-deck about the pilot-house, chattering at each other like a flock of excited magpies,
and there was a scandalized murmur at my heartless promptitude. What they wanted to keep
that body hanging about for I can't guess. Embalm it, maybe. But I had also heard another, and
a very ominous, murmur on the deck below. My friends the wood- cutters were likewise
scandalized, and with a better show of reason -- though I admit that the reason itself was quite
inadmissible. Oh, quite! I had made up my mind that if my late helmsman was to be eaten, the
fishes alone should have him. He had been a very second-rate helmsman while alive, but now
he was dead he might have become a first-class temptation, and possibly cause some startling
trouble. Besides, I was anxious to take the wheel, the man in pink py- jamas showing himself a
hopeless duffer at the busi- ness.

"This I did directly the simple funeral was over. We were going half-speed, keeping right in the
middle of the stream, and I listened to the talk about me. They had given up Kurtz, they had
given up the station; Kurtz was dead, and the station had been burnt -- and so on -- and so
on. The red-haired pilgrim was beside himself with the thought that at least this poor Kurtz had
been properly avenged. 'Say! We must have made a glorious slaughter of them in the bush.
Eh? What do you think? Say?' He positively danced, the bloodthirsty little gingery beggar. And
he had nearly fainted when he saw the wounded man! I could not help saying, 'You made a
glorious lot of smoke, anyhow.' I had seen, from the way the tops of the bushes rustled and
flew, that almost all the shots had gone too high. You can't hit anything unless you take aim and
fire from the shoulder; but these chaps fired from the hip with their eyes shut. The retreat, I
maintained -- and I was right -- was caused by the screeching of the steam whistle. Upon this
they forgot Kurtz, and began to howl at me with indignant protests.

"The manager stood by the wheel murmuring con- fidentially about the necessity of getting well
away down the river before dark at all events, when I saw in the distance a clearing on the
riverside and the outlines of some sort of building. 'What's this?' I asked. He clapped his hands
in wonder. 'The station!' he cried. I edged in at once, still going half-speed.

"Through my glasses I saw the slope of a hill inter- spersed with rare trees and perfectly free
from under- growth. 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 en- closure or fence of any kind; but there had been one
apparently, for near the house half-a-dozen slim posts remained in a row, roughly trimmed, and
with their upper ends ornamented with round carved balls. The rails, or whatever there had
been between, had dis- appeared. Of course the forest surrounded all that. The river-bank
was clear, and on the waterside I saw a white man under a hat like a cartwheel beckoning
persistently with his whole arm. Examinig 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 at- tacked,' screamed the manager. 'I know -- I know.
It's all right,' yelled back the other, as cheerful as you please. 'Come along. It's all right. I am
glad.'

"His aspect reminded me of something I had seen -- something funny I had seen somewhere.
As I manoeuvred to get alongside, I was asking myself, 'What does this fellow look like?'
Suddenly I got it. He looked like a harlequin. His clothes had been made of some stuff that
was brown holland probably, but it was covered with patches all over, with bright patches,
blue, red, and yellow -- patches on the back, patches on the front, patches on elbows, on
knees; coloured binding around his jacket, scarlet edging at the bottom of his trousers; and the
sunshine made him look extremely gay and wonderfully neat withal, because you could see
how beautifully all this patching had been done. A beardless, boyish face, very fair, no features
to speak of, nose peeling, little blue eyes, smiles and frowns chasing each other over that open
countenance like sunshine and shadow on a wind- swept plain. 'Look out, captain!' he cried;
'there's a snag lodged in here last night.' What! Another snag? I confess I swore shamefully. I
had nearly holed my cripple, to finish off that charming trip. The harlequin on the bank turned
his little pug-nose up to me. 'You English?' he asked, all smiles. 'Are you?' I shouted from the
wheel. The smiles vanished, and he shook his head as if sorry for my disappointment. Then he
brightened up. 'Never mind!' he cried encouragingly. 'Are we in time?' I asked. 'He is up
there,' he replied, with a toss of the head up the hill, and becoming gloomy all of a sudden. His
face was like the autumn sky, overcast one moment and bright the next.

"When the manager, escorted by the pilgrims, all of them armed to the teeth, had gone to the
house this chap came on board. 'I say, I don't like this. These natives are in the bush,' I said.
He assured me earnestly it was all right. 'They are simple people,' he added; 'well, I am glad
you came. It took me all my time to keep them off.' 'But you said it was all right,' I cried. 'Oh,
they meant no harm,' he said; and as I stared he corrected himself, 'Not exactly.' Then viva-
ciously, 'My faith, your pilot-house wants a clean-up!' In the next breath he advised me to
keep enough steam on the boiler to blow the whistle in case of any trouble. 'One good screech
will do more for you than all your rifles. They are simple people,' he repeated. He rattled away
at such a rate he quite over- whelmed me. He seemed to be trying to make up for lots of
silence, and actually hinted, laughing, that such was the case. 'Don't you talk with Mr. Kurtz?' I
said. 'You don't talk with that man -- you listen to him,' he exclaimed with severe exaltation.
'But now --' He waved his arm, and in the twinkling of an eye was in the uttermost depths of
despondency. In a moment he came up again with a jump, possessed himself of both my
hands, shook them continuously, while he gabbled: 'Brother sailor . . . honour . . . pleasure . . .
delight . . .introduce myself . . . Russian . . . son of an arch-priest . . . Government of Tambov .
. . What? Tobacco! English tobacco; the excellent English tobacco! Now, that's brotherly.
Smoke? Where's a sailor that does not smoke?'

"The pipe soothed him, and gradually I made out he had run away from school, had gone to
sea in a Russian ship; ran away again; served some time in English ships; was now reconciled
with the arch- priest. He made a point of that. 'But when one is young one must see things,
gather experience, ideas; enlarge the mind.' 'Here!' I interrupted. 'You can never tell! Here I
met Mr. Kurtz,' he said, youth fully solemn and reproachful. I held my tongue after that. It
appears he had persuaded a Dutch trading- house on the coast to fit him out with stores and
goods, and had started for the interior with a light heart and no more idea of what would
happen to him than a baby. He had been wandering about that river for nearly two years alone,
cut off from everybody and everything. 'I am not so young as I look. I am twenty- five,' he
said. 'At first old Van Shuyten would tell me to go to the devil,' he narrated with keen
enjoyment; 'but I stuck to him, and talked and talked, till at last he got afraid I would talk the
hind-leg off his favour- ite 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 some- times -- and
sometimes you've got to clear out so quick when the people get angry.' He thumbed the pages.
'You made notes in Russian?' I asked. He nodded. 'I thought they were written in cipher,' I
said. He laughed, then became serious. 'I had lots of trouble to keep these people off,' he said.
'Did they want to kill you?' I asked. 'Oh, no!' he cried, and checked himself. 'Why did they
attack us?' I pursued. He hesitated, then said shamefacedly, 'They don't want him to go.'Don't
they?' I said curiously. He nodded a nod full of mystery and wisdom. 'I tell you,' he cried, 'this
man has enlarged my mind.' He opened his arms wide, staring at me with his little blue eyes
that were perfectly round."
 

                                   III
 

"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 alto- gether 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 farther -- till
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 quick -- quick -- I tell you.' The glamour of youth enveloped
his parti-coloured rags, his destitution, his loneliness, the essential desolation of his futile
wanderings. For months -- for years -- his 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 some- thing 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, un- calculating, 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 he -- the man before your eyes -- who 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 ac- cepted 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 cried,
almost passionately. 'It was in general. He made me see things -- things.'

"He threw his arms up. We were on deck at the time, and the headman of my wood cutters,
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 impene- trable to
human thought, so pitiless to human weak- ness. 'And, ever since, you have been with him, of
course?' I said.

"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? ex- ploring or
what?' I asked. 'Oh, yes, of course', he had discovered lots of villages, a lake, too -- he did
not know exactly in what direction; it was dangerous to inquire too much -- but 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 reluc- tance to speak of
Kurtz. The man filled his life, occu- pied his thoughts, swayed his emotions. 'What can you
expect?' he burst out; 'he came to them with thunder and lightning, you know -- and they had
never seen anything like it -- and very terrible. He could be very terrible. You can't judge Mr.
Kurtz as you would an ordinary man. No, no, no! Now -- just to give you an idea -- I don't
mind telling you, he wanted to shoot me, too, one day -- but 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 people -- forget himself -- you know.'
'Why! he's mad,' I said. He protested indignantly. Mr. Kurtz couldn't be mad. If I hald 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 quiet -- as silent and quiet as the ruined house on the hill -- made 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 prison -- they 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 months -- getting himself adored, I suppose -- and 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 the -- what shall I
say? -- less material aspirations. However he had got much worse suddenly. 'I heard he was
lying helpless, and so I came up -- took 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 window-holes, 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 care- fully 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 disturbing --
food for thought and also for vul- tures 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 dosed 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 that eternal
slumber.

"I am not disclosing any trade secrets. In fact, the manager said afretwards 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 re- straint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was
something wanting in him -- some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not
be found under his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of his deficiency himself I can't
say. I think the knowledge came to him at last -- only at the very last. But the wilderness had
found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vegeance 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 solitude -- and the whisper had proved
irresistibly fas- cinating. 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 distance.

"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 these -- say, symbols -- down. He was not afraid of the
natives; they would not stir till Mr. Kurtz gave the word. His ascendancy was extraor- dinary.
The camps of the 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 a]l, 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 exist -- obviously -- in the sunshine. The young man looked
at me with surprise. I suppose it did not occur to him that Mr. Kurtz was no idol of mine. He
forgot I hadn't heard any of these splendid monologues on, what was it? on love, jus- tice,
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 condi- tions, 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 in- valid food for months here. He was shamefully aban- doned. A man like this, with such
ideas. Shamefully! Shamefully! I -- I -- haven't slept for the last ten nights . . .'

"His voice lost itself in the calm of the evening. The long shadows of the forest had slipped
downhill 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 splendour, with a murky and
overshadowed bend above and below. Not a living soul was seen on the shore. The bushes
did not rustle.

"Suddenly round the corner of the house a group of men appeared, as though they had come
up from the ground. They waded waist-deep 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 beings -- of naked human beings -- with
spears in their hands, with bows, with shields, with wild glances and savage movements, were
poured into the dearing by the dark-faced 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 situ- ation, as if to be at the mercy of that atrocious phan- tom had been a dishonouring
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. Kurtz -- Kurtz -- that means short in German -- don't
it? Well, the name was as true as everything else in his life -- and death. He loolked at least
seven feet long. His covering had fallen off, and his body emerged from it pitiful and appalling
as from a winding-sheet. 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 wide -- it 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 percepti- ble 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 long aspiration.

"Some of the pilgrims behind the stretcher carried his arms -- two shot-guns, a heavy rifle, and
a light revolver-carbine -- 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 bed place and a camp-stool 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 expres- sion. 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 writ- ing 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 cap- able
of a whisper. However, he had enough strength in him -- factitious no doubt -- to 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 star- ing at the shore. I followed the
direction of his glance.

"Dark human shapes could be made out in the dis- tance, 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 fan- tastic head-dresses of spotted skins, warlike and still in statuesque repose.
And from right to left along the lighted shore moved a wild and gorgeous apparition of a
woman.

"She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed clothes, 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 witch-men, 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, wild-eyed 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, half-shaped 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 shad- ows darted out on the earth, swept around on the river,
gathering the steamer into a shadowy embrace. A formidable silence hung over the scene.

"She turned away slowly, walked on, following the bank, and passed into the bushes to the
left. Once only her eyes gleamed back at us in the dusk of the thickets before she disappeared.

" 'If she had offered to come aboard I really think I would have tried to shoot her,' said the
man of patches, nervously. 'I have 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
under- stand 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.... No -- it's too much for me. Ah, well,
it's all over now.'

"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
yet -- I will return. I'll show you what can be done. You with your little peddling no- tions --
you are interfering with me. I will return. I....'

"The manager came out. He did me the honour 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 him -- haven'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. Cau- tiously, 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 ivory -- mostly fossil. We must
save it, at all events -- but look how precarious the position is -- and 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 judg- ment. It is my duty to
point it out in the proper quar- ter.' 'Oh,' said I, 'that fellow -- what'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
relief -- positively for relief. 'Nevertheless I think Mr. Kurtz is a remark- able 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 favour 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 vic- torious corruption, the darkness of an impenetrable night....
The Russian tapped me on the shoulder. I heard him mumbling and stammering something
about 'brother seaman -- couldn't conceal -- knowledge 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. Kuutz was one of the immortals. 'Well!' said I at last, 'speak out. As it happens, I
am Mr. Kurtz's friend -- in a way.'

"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 conse- quences. 'He suspected there
was an active ill will to- wards him on the part of these white men that --' 'You are right,' I
said, remembering a certain conver- sation 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 people -- and I want nothing, you
know.' He stood biting his lip, then: 'I didn't want any harm to happen to these whites here, but
of course I was thinking of Mr. Kurtz's reputation -- but you are a brother seaman and --' 'All
right,' said I, after a time. 'Mr. Kurtz's reputation is safe with me.' I did not know how truly I
spoke.

"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 away -- and then again.... But I
don't understand these matters. I am a simple man. He thought it would scare you away -- that
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.' 'Ye-e-es,' he muttered, not very convinced
apparently. 'Thanks,' said I; 'I shall keep my eyes open.' 'But quiet -- eh?' 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 wait- ing not very far. I am off. Could
you give me a few Martini-Henry cartridges?' I could, and did, with proper secrecy. He helped
himself, with a wink at me, to a handful of my tobacco. 'Between sailors -- you know -- good
English tobacco.' At the door of the pilot-house 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
san- dalwise 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,' ctc., etc. He seemed to think himself
excellently well equipped for a re- newed encounter with the wilderness. 'Ah! I'll never, never
meet such a man again. You ought to have heard him recite poetry -- his own, too, it was, he
told me. Poetry!' He rolled his eyes at the recollection of these delights. 'Oh, he enlarged my
mind!' 'Good- bye,' said I. He shook hands and vanished in the night. Sometimes I ask myself
whether I had ever really seen him -- whether it was possible to meet such a phenomenon! . . .

"When I woke up shortly after midnight his warn- ing 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
station-house. 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 monoto- nous beating of a big drum filled the air with muf- fled 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 half-awake senses. I believe I
dozed off leaning over the rail, till an abrupt burst of yells, an overwhelming outbreak of a
pent-up 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
first -- the thing seemed so impossible. The fact is I was com- pletely unnerved by a sheer
blank fright, pure abstract terror, unconnected with any distinct shape of physical danger. What
made this emotion so overpowering was -- how shall I define it? -- the moral shock I re-
ceived, as if something altogether monstrous, intoler- able 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 wel- come and
composing. It pacified me, in fact, so much that I did not raise an alarm.

"There was an agent buttoned up inside an ulster and sleeping on a chair on deck within three
feet of me. The yells had not awakened him; he snored very slightly; I left him to his slumbers
and leaped ashore. I did not betray Mr. Kurtz -- it was ordered I should never betray him -- it
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
any one the peculiar blackness of that experience.

"As soon as I got on the bank I saw a trail -- a broad trail through the grass. I remember the
exultation with which I said to myself, 'He can't walk -- he is crawling on all-fours -- I'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 im-
proper 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 things -- you know. And I remember I confounded the beat of the drum with the beating
of my heart, and was pleased at its calm regularity.

"I kept to the track though -- then 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 seen anything. I was circumventing
Kurtz as though it had been a boyish game.

"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 vapour 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. Sup- pose he began to shout? Though he could
hardly stand, there was still plenty of vigour in his voice. 'Go away -- hide 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 horns -- antelope horns, I think -- on its head. Some sorcerer, some
witch-man, 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 speaking- trumpet. '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 Shadow -- this 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 intimacy were being laid -- to endure -- to endure
-- even to the end -- even beyond.

" 'I had irnmense 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 scoun- drel --'
'Your success in Europe is assured in any case,' I affirmed steadily, I did not want to have the
throttling of him, you understand -- and indeed it would have been very little use for any
practical pur- pose. I tried to break the spell -- the 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 mon- strous 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 posi- tion 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 him -- himself -- 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 said -- repeating the phrases we pro- nounced -- but what's the good? They were
common everyday words -- the familiar, vague sounds ex- changed 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 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 clear concentrated, it is true, upon himself with horrible intensity, yet clear; and therein
was my only chance -- barring, of course, the killing him there and then, which wasn't so good,
on account of un- avoidable 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 had -- for 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 strug- gling 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 was not much heavier than a child.

"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 down stream, and two thousand eyes followed the evolutions of the splash-
ing, thumping, fierce river-demon 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 bod- ies; they
shook towards the fierce river-demon a bunch of black feathers, a mangy skin with a pendent
tail -- something 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 sud- denly, were like the responses of some satanic litany.

"We had carried Kurtz into the pilot-house: 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 some- thing, and all that wild mob took up the shout in a roaring
chorus of articulated, rapid, breathless ut- terance.

" 'Do you understand this?' I asked. "He kept on looking out past me with fiery, long- ing eyes,
with a mingled expression of wistfulness and hate. He made no answer, but I saw a smile, a
smile of indefinable meaning, appearing on his colourless lips that a moment after twitched
convulsively. 'Do I not?' he said slowly, gasping, as if the words had been torn out of him by a
supernatural power.

"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 some one on deck discon- solately. 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
bare arms after us over the sombre and glittering river.

"And then that imbecile crowd down on the deck started their little fun, and I could see nothing
more for smoke.
 

"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 disfavour. 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 now -- images of
wealth and fame revolving obse- quiously round his unextinguishable gift of noble and lofty
expression. My Intended, my station, my career, my ideas -- these 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 mould of primeval
earth. But both the diabolic love and the unearthly hate of the mysteries it had pene- trated
fought for the possession of that soul satiated with primitive emotions, avid of lying fame, of
sham distinction, of all the appearances of success and power.

"Sometimes he was contemptibly childish. He de- sired to have kings meet him at
railway-stations on his return from some ghastly Nowhere, where he in- tended 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 motives -- always.' 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 an- other world, the forerunner of
change, of conquest, of trade, of massacres, of blessings. I looked ahead -- piloting. '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 heart yet!' he cried at the invisible wilderness.

"We broke down -- as I had expected -- and 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 photo- graph -- the lot tied together with a shoe-string. '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 frag- ment of a phrase
from some newspaper article? He had been writing for the papers and meant to do so again,
'for the furthering of my ideas. It's a duty.'

"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 engine-driver to take to pieces the leaky cylinders, to straighten a
bent connecting-rod, and in other such matters. I lived in an infernal mess of rust, filings, nuts,
bolts, spanners, hammers, ratchet drills -- things I abominate, because I don't get on with them.
I tended the little forge we fortunately had aboard; I toiled wearily in a wretched scrap-heap --
unless I had the shakes too bad to stand.

"One evening coming in with a candle I was star- tled 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, nonsense!' and stood over him as if transfixed.

"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 sombre pride, of ruthless power, of
craven terror -- of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of
desire, temptation, and surrender during that su- preme moment of complete knowledge? He
cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision -- he cried out twice, a cry that was no more
than a breath: " 'The horror! The horror!'

"I blew the candle out and left the cabin. The pil- grims were dining in the mess-room, and I
took my place opposite the manager, who lifted his eyes to give me a questioning glance,
which I successfully ig- nored. 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 scath- ing contempt:

" 'Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.'

"All the pilgrims rushed out to see. I remained, and went on with my dinner. I believe that I was
con- sidered brutally callous. However, I did not eat much. There was a lamp in there -- light,
don't you know -- and 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 am of course aware that next day the
pilgrims buried something in a muddy hole.

"And then they very nearly buried me.

"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 is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The
most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of
unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can
imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around,
without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without
the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your
own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ulti- mate wisdom, then
life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was within a hair's breadth 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 under- stand 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 pene- trate all the hearts that beat in the
darkness. He had summed up -- he had judged. 'The horror!' He was a remarkable man. After
all, this was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candour, 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 best -- a vision of
greyness with- out form filled with physical pain, and a careless con- tempt for the
evanescence of all things -- even 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 permit- ted 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 summing-up would not have been a word of careless contempt. Better his cry
-- much bet- ter. It was an affirmation, a moral victory paid for by innumerable defeats, by
abominable terrors, by abomi- nable 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 elo- quence 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 knowl- edge of life was to me an irritating
pretence, 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 daresay I was not very well at that time. I tottered about the streets -- there were various
affairs to settle -- grinning bitterly at perfectly respectable persons. I atmit my behaviour was
inex- cusable, but then my temperature was seldom normal in these days. My dear aunt's
endeavours 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 clean- shaved man, with an official manner
and wearing gold-rimmed 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 knowkdge of unexplored regions must have been necessarily extensive
and pe- culiar -- owing to his great abilities and to the deplor- able 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,' etc., etc. 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 mo- ments. 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 grey hair flowing over a greasy coat-collar. 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 any -- which 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 been -- exactly. He was a universal
genius -- on that point I agreed with the old chap, who thereupon blew his nose noisily into a
large cotton handkerchief and withdrew in senile agitation, bear- ing 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
anything -- anything. He would have been a splendid leader of an extreme party.' 'What party?'
I asked. 'Any party,' answered the other. 'He was an -- an -- extremist.' 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 let- ters 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 con- veyed the delicate
shade of truthfulness upon those features. She seemed ready to listen without mental
reservation, without suspicion, without a thought for herself. I conclucled 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 Intended -- and 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 fulfil- ment of one of those 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 memo- ries 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 well-kept 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 lived -- a shadow in- satiable 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 me -- the stretcher, the
phantom-bearers, the wild crowd of obedient worshippers, the gloom of the forests, the glitter
of the reach between the murky bends, the beat of thle drum, regular and muffled like the
beating of a heart -- the 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
remem- bered his abject pleading, his abject threats, the colos- sal 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 do --
resist? 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 panel -- stare with that wide and immense stare embracing,
con- demning, loathing all the universe. I seemed to hear the whispered cry, 'The horror! The
horror! '

"The dusk was falling. I had to wait in a lofty drawingroom 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 sombre and polished sarcophagus. A high door opened closed I rose.

"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 forever. She took both my hands in hers
and murmured, 'I had heard you were coming.' I noticed she was not very young -- I mean not
girlish. She had a mature capacity for fidel- ity, for belief, for suffering. The room seemed to
have grown darker, as if all the sad light of the cloudy eve- ning 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, confi- dent,
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 yesterday -- nay, this very minute. I saw her and him in the same instant of time -- his
death and her sorrow -- I saw her sorrow in the very moment of his death. Do you
understand? I saw them together - I 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 summing up 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 quickly 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 impos- sible 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 watch for more words on my lips, I went on, 'It was impossible not to --'

" 'Love him,' she finished eagerly, silencing me into an appalled dumbness. 'How true! how
truel 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 and love.

" '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 you -- and oh! I must
speak. I want you -- you who have heard his last words -- to know I have been worthy of
him.... It is not pride.... Yes! I am proud to know I understood him better than any one on
earth -- he told me so himself. And since his mother died I have had no one -- no one -- to --
to --'

"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 sympa- thy; 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 pau- per 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 ac- companiment of all
the other sounds, full of mystery, desolation, and sorrow, I had ever heard -- the ripple of the
river, the soughing of the trees swayed by the wind, the murmurs of the 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 her -- from
which I could not even defend myself.

" 'What a loss to me -- to us!' -- she corrected her- self with beautiful generosity; then added
in a mur- mur, 'To the world.' By the last gleams of twilight I could see the glitter of her eyes,
full of tears -- of tears that would not fall.

" 'I have been very happy -- very fortunate -- very proud,' she went on. 'Too fortunate. Too
happy for a little while. And now I am unhappy for -- for life.'

"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, of his noble heart, nothing remains -- nothing but a memory. You and I --'

" 'We shall always remember him,' I said hastily.

" 'No!' she cried. 'It is impossible that all this should be lost -- that such a life should be
sacrificed to leave nothing -- but sorrow. You know what vast plans he had. I knew of them,
too -- I could not perhaps understand -- but others knew of them. Something must remain. His
words, at least, have not died.'

" 'His words will remain,' I said.

" 'And his example,' she whispered to herself. 'Men looked up to him -- his goodness shone in
every act. His example --'

" 'True,' I said; 'his example, too. Yes, his example. I forgot that.'

" 'But I do not. I cannot -- I cannot believe -- not yet. I cannot believe that I sha]l never see
him again, that nobody will see him again, never, never, never.' "She put out her arms as if after
a retreating figure, stretching them back 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 cf 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.

" 'Everything that could be done --' I mumbled.

" 'Ah, but I believed in him more than any one on earth -- more than his own mother, more
than -- him- self. He needed me! Me! I would have treasured every sigh, every word, every
sign, every glance.'

"I felt like a chill grip on my chest. 'Don't,' I said, in a muffled voice.

" 'Forgive me. I -- I have mourned so long in silence -- in silence.... You were with him -- to
the last? I think of his loneliness. Nobody near to under- stand 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 murmured in a heart-broken tone. 'I want -- I want -- something --
something -- to -- to live with.'

"I was on the point of crying at her, 'Don't you hear them?' The dusk was repeating them in a
per- sistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first
whisper of a rising wind. 'The horror! The horror!'

" 'His last word -- to live with,' she insisted. 'Don't you understand I loved him -- I loved him
-- I loved him!'

"I pulled myself together and spoke slowly.

" 'The last word he pronounced was -- your name.'

"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 it -- I 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 dark -- too
dark altogether...."

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 tran- quil waterway
leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky -- seemed to
lead into the heart of an immense darkness.