book into my pocket. I assure you to leave off reading was like tearing

myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship.

“I started the lame engine ahead. ‘It must be this miserable

trader—this intruder,’ exclaimed the manager, looking back malevolently

at the place we had left. ‘He must be English,’ I said. ‘It will not

save him from getting into trouble if he is not careful,’ muttered the

manager darkly. I observed with assumed innocence that no man was safe

from trouble in this world.

“The current was more rapid now, the steamer seemed at her last gasp,

the stern-wheel flopped languidly, and I caught myself listening on

tiptoe for the next beat of the boat, for in sober truth I expected the

wretched thing to give up every moment. It was like watching the last

flickers of a life. But still we crawled. Sometimes I would pick out a

tree a little way ahead to measure our progress towards Kurtz by, but I

lost it invariably before we got abreast. To keep the eyes so long on

one thing was too much for human patience. The manager displayed a

beautiful resignation. I fretted and fumed and took to arguing with

myself whether or no I would talk openly with Kurtz; but before I could

come to any conclusion it occurred to me that my speech or my silence,

indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility. What did it matter

what any one knew or ignored? What did it matter who was manager? One

gets sometimes such a flash of insight. The essentials of this affair

lay deep under the surface, beyond my reach, and beyond my power of

meddling.

“Towards the evening of the second day we judged ourselves about eight

miles from Kurtz’s station. I wanted to push on; but the manager looked

grave, and told me the navigation up there was so dangerous that it

would be advisable, the sun being very low already, to wait where we

were till next morning. Moreover, he pointed out that if the warning to

approach cautiously were to be followed, we must approach in

daylight—not at dusk or in the dark. This was sensible enough. Eight

miles meant nearly three hours’ steaming for us, and I could also see

suspicious ripples at the upper end of the reach. Nevertheless, I was

annoyed beyond expression at the delay, and most unreasonably, too,

since one night more could not matter much after so many months. As we

had plenty of wood, and caution was the word, I brought up in the

middle of the stream. The reach was narrow, straight, with high sides

like a railway cutting. The dusk came gliding into it long before the

sun had set. The current ran smooth and swift, but a dumb immobility

sat on the banks. The living trees, lashed together by the creepers and

every living bush of the undergrowth, might have been changed into

stone, even to the slenderest twig, to the lightest leaf. It was not

sleep—it seemed unnatural, like a state of trance. Not the faintest

sound of any kind could be heard. You looked on amazed, and began to

suspect yourself of being deaf—then the night came suddenly, and struck

you blind as well. About three in the morning some large fish leaped,

and the loud splash made me jump as though a gun had been fired. When

the sun rose there was a white fog, very warm and clammy, and more

blinding than the night. It did not shift or drive; it was just there,

standing all round you like something solid. At eight or nine, perhaps,

it lifted as a shutter lifts. We had a glimpse of the towering

multitude of trees, of the immense matted jungle, with the blazing

little ball of the sun hanging over it—all perfectly still—and then the

white shutter came down again, smoothly, as if sliding in greased

grooves. I ordered the chain, which we had begun to heave in, to be

paid out again. Before it stopped running with a muffled rattle, a cry,

a very loud cry, as of infinite desolation, soared slowly in the opaque

air. It ceased. A complaining clamour, modulated in savage discords,

filled our ears. The sheer unexpectedness of it made my hair stir under

my cap. I don’t know how it struck the others: to me it seemed as

though the mist itself had screamed, so suddenly, and apparently from

all sides at once, did this tumultuous and mournful uproar arise. It

culminated in a hurried outbreak of almost intolerably excessive

shrieking, which stopped short, leaving us stiffened in a variety of

silly attitudes, and obstinately listening to the nearly as appalling

and excessive silence. ‘Good God! What is the meaning—’ stammered at my

elbow one of the pilgrims—a little fat man, with sandy hair and red

whiskers, who wore sidespring boots, and pink pyjamas tucked into his

socks. Two others remained open-mouthed a whole minute, then dashed

into the little cabin, to rush out incontinently and stand darting

scared glances, with Winchesters at ‘ready’ in their hands. What we

could see was just the steamer we were on, her outlines blurred as

though she had been on the point of dissolving, and a misty strip of

water, perhaps two feet broad, around her—and that was all. The rest of

the world was nowhere, as far as our eyes and ears were concerned. Just

nowhere. Gone, disappeared; swept off without leaving a whisper or a

shadow behind.

“I went forward, and ordered the chain to be hauled in short, so as to

be ready to trip the anchor and move the steamboat at once if

necessary. ‘Will they attack?’ whispered an awed voice. ‘We will be all

butchered in this fog,’ murmured another. The faces twitched with the

strain, the hands trembled slightly, the eyes forgot to wink. It was

very curious to see the contrast of expressions of the white men and of

the black fellows of our crew, who were as much strangers to that part

of the river as we, though their homes were only eight hundred miles

away. The whites, of course greatly discomposed, had besides a curious

look of being painfully shocked by such an outrageous row. The others

had an alert, naturally interested expression; but their faces were

essentially quiet, even those of the one or two who grinned as they

hauled at the chain. Several exchanged short, grunting phrases, which

seemed to settle the matter to their satisfaction. Their headman, a

young, broad-chested black, severely draped in dark-blue fringed

cloths, with fierce nostrils and his hair all done up artfully in oily

ringlets, stood near me. ‘Aha!’ I said, just for good fellowship’s

sake. ‘Catch ’im,’ he snapped, with a bloodshot widening of his eyes

and a flash of sharp teeth—‘catch ’im. Give ’im to us.’ ‘To you, eh?’ I

asked; ‘what would you do with them?’ ‘Eat ’im!’ he said curtly, and,

leaning his elbow on the rail, looked out into the fog in a dignified

and profoundly pensive attitude. I would no doubt have been properly

horrified, had it not occurred to me that he and his chaps must be very

hungry: that they must have been growing increasingly hungry for at

least this month past. They had been engaged for six months (I don’t

think a single one of them had any clear idea of time, as we at the end

of countless ages have. They still belonged to the beginnings of

time—had no inherited experience to teach them as it were), and of

course, as long as there was a piece of paper written over in

accordance with some farcical law or other made down the river, it

didn’t enter anybody’s head to trouble how they would live. Certainly

they had brought with them some rotten hippo-meat, which couldn’t have

lasted very long, anyway, even if the pilgrims hadn’t, in the midst of

a shocking hullabaloo, thrown a considerable quantity of it overboard.

It looked like a high-handed proceeding; but it was really a case of

legitimate self-defence. You can’t breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping,

and eating, and at the same time keep your precarious grip on

existence. Besides that, they had given them every week three pieces of

brass wire, each about nine inches long; and the theory was they were

to buy their provisions with that currency in riverside villages. You

can see how _that_ worked. There were either no villages, or the people

were hostile, or the director, who like the rest of us fed out of tins,

with an occasional old he-goat thrown in, didn’t want to stop the

steamer for some more or less recondite reason. So, unless they

swallowed the wire itself, or made loops of it to snare the fishes

with, I don’t see what good their extravagant salary could be to them.

I must say it was paid with a regularity worthy of a large and

honourable trading company. For the rest, the only thing to eat—though

it didn’t look eatable in the least—I saw in their possession was a few

lumps of some stuff like half-cooked dough, of a dirty lavender colour,

they kept wrapped in leaves, and now and then swallowed a piece of, but

so small that it seemed done more for the looks of the thing than for

any serious purpose of sustenance. Why in the name of all the gnawing

devils of hunger they didn’t go for us—they were thirty to five—and

have a good tuck-in for once, amazes me now when I think of it. They

were big powerful men, with not much capacity to weigh the

consequences, with courage, with strength, even yet, though their skins

were no longer glossy and their muscles no longer hard. And I saw that

something restraining, one of those human secrets that baffle

probability, had come into play there. I looked at them with a swift

quickening of interest—not because it occurred to me I might be eaten

by them before very long, though I own to you that just then I

perceived—in a new light, as it were—how unwholesome the pilgrims

looked, and I hoped, yes, I positively hoped, that my aspect was not

so—what shall I say?—so—unappetizing: a touch of fantastic vanity which

fitted well with the dream-sensation that pervaded all my days at that

time. Perhaps I had a little fever, too. One can’t live with one’s

finger everlastingly on one’s pulse. I had often ‘a little fever,’ or a

little touch of other things—the playful paw-strokes of the wilderness,

the preliminary trifling before the more serious onslaught which came

in due course. Yes; I looked at them as you would on any human being,

with a curiosity of their impulses, motives, capacities, weaknesses,

when brought to the test of an inexorable physical necessity.

Restraint! What possible restraint? Was it superstition, disgust,

patience, fear—or some kind of primitive honour? No fear can stand up

to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist

where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call

principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze. Don’t you know the

devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating torment, its black

thoughts, its sombre and brooding ferocity? Well, I do. It takes a man

all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly. It’s really easier to

face bereavement, dishonour, and the perdition of one’s soul—than this

kind of prolonged hunger. Sad, but true. And these chaps, too, had no

earthly reason for any kind of scruple. Restraint! I would just as soon

have expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the corpses of a

battlefield. But there was the fact facing me—the fact dazzling, to be

seen, like the foam on the depths of the sea, like a ripple on an

unfathomable enigma, a mystery greater—when I thought of it—than the

curious, inexplicable note of desperate grief in this savage clamour

that had swept by us on the river-bank, behind the blind whiteness of

the fog.

“Two pilgrims were quarrelling in hurried whispers as to which bank.

‘Left.’ ‘no, no; how can you? Right, right, of course.’ ‘It is very

serious,’ said the manager’s voice behind me; ‘I would be desolated if

anything should happen to Mr. Kurtz before we came up.’ I looked at

him, and had not the slightest doubt he was sincere. He was just the

kind of man who would wish to preserve appearances. That was his

restraint. But when he muttered something about going on at once, I did

not even take the trouble to answer him. I knew, and he knew, that it

was impossible. Were we to let go our hold of the bottom, we would be

absolutely in the air—in space. We wouldn’t be able to tell where we

were going to—whether up or down stream, or across—till we fetched

against one bank or the other—and then we wouldn’t know at first which

it was. Of course I made no move. I had no mind for a smash-up. You

couldn’t imagine a more deadly place for a shipwreck. Whether we

drowned at once or not, we were sure to perish speedily in one way or

another. ‘I authorize you to take all the risks,’ he said, after a

short silence. ‘I refuse to take any,’ I said shortly; which was just

the answer he expected, though its tone might have surprised him.

‘Well, I must defer to your judgment. You are captain,’ he said with

marked civility. I turned my shoulder to him in sign of my

appreciation, and looked into the fog. How long would it last? It was

the most hopeless lookout. The approach to this Kurtz grubbing for

ivory in the wretched bush was beset by as many dangers as though he

had been an enchanted princess sleeping in a fabulous castle. ‘Will

they attack, do you think?’ asked the manager, in a confidential tone.

“I did not think they would attack, for several obvious reasons. The

thick fog was one. If they left the bank in their canoes they would get

lost in it, as we would be if we attempted to move. Still, I had also

judged the jungle of both banks quite impenetrable—and yet eyes were in

it, eyes that had seen us. The riverside bushes were certainly very

thick; but the undergrowth behind was evidently penetrable. However,

during the short lift I had seen no canoes anywhere in the

reach—certainly not abreast of the steamer. But what made the idea of

attack inconceivable to me was the nature of the noise—of the cries we

had heard. They had not the fierce character boding immediate hostile

intention. Unexpected, wild, and violent as they had been, they had

given me an irresistible impression of sorrow. The glimpse of the

steamboat had for some reason filled those savages with unrestrained

grief. The danger, if any, I expounded, was from our proximity to a

great human passion let loose. Even extreme grief may ultimately vent

itself in violence—but more generally takes the form of apathy....

“You should have seen the pilgrims stare! They had no heart to grin, or

even to revile me: but I believe they thought me gone mad—with fright,

maybe. I delivered a regular lecture. My dear boys, it was no good

bothering. Keep a lookout? Well, you may guess I watched the fog for

the signs of lifting as a cat watches a mouse; but for anything else

our eyes were of no more use to us than if we had been buried miles

deep in a heap of cotton-wool. It felt like it, too—choking, warm,

stifling. Besides, all I said, though it sounded extravagant, was

absolutely true to fact. What we afterwards alluded to as an attack was

really an attempt at repulse. The action was very far from being

aggressive—it was not even defensive, in the usual sense: it was

undertaken under the stress of desperation, and in its essence was

purely protective.

“It developed itself, I should say, two hours after the fog lifted, and

its commencement was at a spot, roughly speaking, about a mile and a

half below Kurtz’s station. We had just floundered and flopped round a

bend, when I saw an islet, a mere grassy hummock of bright green, in

the middle of the stream. It was the only thing of the kind; but as we

opened the reach more, I perceived it was the head of a long sand-bank,

or rather of a chain of shallow patches stretching down the middle of

the river. They were discoloured, just awash, and the whole lot was

seen just under the water, exactly as a man’s backbone is seen running

down the middle of his back under the skin. Now, as far as I did see, I

could go to the right or to the left of this. I didn’t know either

channel, of course. The banks looked pretty well alike, the depth

appeared the same; but as I had been informed the station was on the

west side, I naturally headed for the western passage.

“No sooner had we fairly entered it than I became aware it was much

narrower than I had supposed. To the left of us there was the long

uninterrupted shoal, and to the right a high, steep bank heavily

overgrown with bushes. Above the bush the trees stood in serried ranks.

The twigs overhung the current thickly, and from distance to distance a

large limb of some tree projected rigidly over the stream. It was then

well on in the afternoon, the face of the forest was gloomy, and a

broad strip of shadow had already fallen on the water. In this shadow

we steamed up—very slowly, as you may imagine. I sheered her well

inshore—the water being deepest near the bank, as the sounding-pole

informed me.

“One of my hungry and forbearing friends was sounding in the bows just

below me. This steamboat was exactly like a decked scow. On the deck,

there were two little teakwood houses, with doors and windows. The

boiler was in the fore-end, and the machinery right astern. Over the

whole there was a light roof, supported on stanchions. The funnel

projected through that roof, and in front of the funnel a small cabin

built of light planks served for a pilot-house. It contained a couch,

two camp-stools, a loaded Martini-Henry leaning in one corner, a tiny

table, and the steering-wheel. It had a wide door in front and a broad

shutter at each side. All these were always thrown open, of course. I

spent my days perched up there on the extreme fore-end of that roof,

before the door. At night I slept, or tried to, on the couch. An

athletic black belonging to some coast tribe and educated by my poor

predecessor, was the helmsman. He sported a pair of brass earrings,

wore a blue cloth wrapper from the waist to the ankles, and thought all

the world of himself. He was the most unstable kind of fool I had ever

seen. He steered with no end of a swagger while you were by; but if he

lost sight of you, he became instantly the prey of an abject funk, and

would let that cripple of a steamboat get the upper hand of him in a

minute.

“I was looking down at the sounding-pole, and feeling much annoyed to

see at each try a little more of it stick out of that river, when I saw

my poleman give up on the business suddenly, and stretch himself flat

on the deck, without even taking the trouble to haul his pole in. He

kept hold on it though, and it trailed in the water. At the same time

the fireman, whom I could also see below me, sat down abruptly before

his furnace and ducked his head. I was amazed. Then I had to look at

the river mighty quick, because there was a snag in the fairway.

Sticks, little sticks, were flying about—thick: they were whizzing

before my nose, dropping below me, striking behind me against my

pilot-house. All this time the river, the shore, the woods, were very

quiet—perfectly quiet. I could only hear the heavy splashing thump of

the stern-wheel and the patter of these things. We cleared the snag

clumsily. Arrows, by Jove! We were being shot at! I stepped in quickly

to close the shutter on the landside. That fool-helmsman, his hands on

the spokes, was lifting his knees high, stamping his feet, champing his

mouth, like a reined-in horse. Confound him! And we were staggering

within ten feet of the bank. I had to lean right out to swing the heavy

shutter, and I saw a face amongst the leaves on the level with my own,

looking at me very fierce and steady; and then suddenly, as though a

veil had been removed from my eyes, I made out, deep in the tangled

gloom, naked breasts, arms, legs, glaring eyes—the bush was swarming

with human limbs in movement, glistening of bronze colour. The twigs

shook, swayed, and rustled, the arrows flew out of them, and then the

shutter came to. ‘Steer her straight,’ I said to the helmsman. He held

his head rigid, face forward; but his eyes rolled, he kept on lifting

and setting down his feet gently, his mouth foamed a little. ‘Keep

quiet!’ I said in a fury. I might just as well have ordered a tree not

to sway in the wind. I darted out. Below me there was a great scuffle

of feet on the iron deck; confused exclamations; a voice screamed, ‘Can

you turn back?’ I caught sight of a V-shaped ripple on the water ahead.

What? Another snag! A fusillade burst out under my feet. The pilgrims

had opened with their Winchesters, and were simply squirting lead into

that bush. A deuce of a lot of smoke came up and drove slowly forward.

I swore at it. Now I couldn’t see the ripple or the snag either. I

stood in the doorway, peering, and the arrows came in swarms. They

might have been poisoned, but they looked as though they wouldn’t kill

a cat. The bush began to howl. Our wood-cutters raised a warlike whoop;

the report of a rifle just at my back deafened me. I glanced over my

shoulder, and the pilot-house was yet full of noise and smoke when I

made a dash at the wheel. The fool-nigger had dropped everything, to

throw the shutter open and let off that Martini-Henry. He stood before

the wide opening, glaring, and I yelled at him to come back, while I

straightened the sudden twist out of that steamboat. There was no room

to turn even if I had wanted to, the snag was somewhere very near ahead

in that confounded smoke, there was no time to lose, so I just crowded

her into the bank—right into the bank, where I knew the water was deep.

“We tore slowly along the overhanging bushes in a whirl of broken twigs

and flying leaves. The fusillade below stopped short, as I had foreseen

it would when the squirts got empty. I threw my head back to a glinting

whizz that traversed the pilot-house, in at one shutter-hole and out at

the other. Looking past that mad helmsman, who was shaking the empty

rifle and yelling at the shore, I saw vague forms of men running bent

double, leaping, gliding, distinct, incomplete, evanescent. Something

big appeared in the air before the shutter, the rifle went overboard,

and the man stepped back swiftly, looked at me over his shoulder in an

extraordinary, profound, familiar manner, and fell upon my feet. The

side of his head hit the wheel twice, and the end of what appeared a

long cane clattered round and knocked over a little camp-stool. It

looked as though after wrenching that thing from somebody ashore he had

lost his balance in the effort. The thin smoke had blown away, we were

clear of the snag, and looking ahead I could see that in another

hundred yards or so I would be free to sheer off, away from the bank;

but my feet felt so very warm and wet that I had to look down. The man

had rolled on his back and stared straight up at me; both his hands

clutched that cane. It was the shaft of a spear that, either thrown or

lunged through the opening, had caught him in the side, just below the

ribs; the blade had gone in out of sight, after making a frightful

gash; my shoes were full; a pool of blood lay very still, gleaming

dark-red under the wheel; his eyes shone with an amazing lustre. The

fusillade burst out again. He looked at me anxiously, gripping the

spear like something precious, with an air of being afraid I would try

to take it away from him. I had to make an effort to free my eyes from

his gaze and attend to the steering. With one hand I felt above my head

for the line of the steam whistle, and jerked out screech after screech

hurriedly. The tumult of angry and warlike yells was checked instantly,

and then from the depths of the woods went out such a tremulous and

prolonged wail of mournful fear and utter despair as may be imagined to

follow the flight of the last hope from the earth. There was a great

commotion in the bush; the shower of arrows stopped, a few dropping

shots rang out sharply—then silence, in which the languid beat of the

stern-wheel came plainly to my ears. I put the helm hard a-starboard at

the moment when the pilgrim in pink pyjamas, very hot and agitated,

appeared in the doorway. ‘The manager sends me—’ he began in an

official tone, and stopped short. ‘Good God!’ he said, glaring at the

wounded man.

“We two whites stood over him, and his lustrous and inquiring glance

enveloped us both. I declare it looked as though he would presently put

to us some questions in an understandable language; but he died without

uttering a sound, without moving a limb, without twitching a muscle.

Only in the very last moment, as though in response to some sign we

could not see, to some whisper we could not hear, he frowned heavily,

and that frown gave to his black death-mask an inconceivably sombre,

brooding, and menacing expression. The lustre of inquiring glance faded

swiftly into vacant glassiness. ‘Can you steer?’ I asked the agent

eagerly. He looked very dubious; but I made a grab at his arm, and he

understood at once I meant him to steer whether or no. To tell you the

truth, I was morbidly anxious to change my shoes and socks. ‘He is

dead,’ murmured the fellow, immensely impressed. ‘No doubt about it,’

said I, tugging like mad at the shoe-laces. ‘And by the way, I suppose

Mr. Kurtz is dead as well by this time.’

“For the moment that was the dominant thought. There was a sense of

extreme disappointment, as though I had found out I had been striving

after something altogether without a substance. I couldn’t have been

more disgusted if I had travelled all this way for the sole purpose of

talking with Mr. Kurtz. Talking with... I flung one shoe overboard, and

became aware that that was exactly what I had been looking forward to—a

talk with Kurtz. I made the strange discovery that I had never imagined

him as doing, you know, but as discoursing. I didn’t say to myself,

‘Now I will never see him,’ or ‘Now I will never shake him by the

hand,’ but, ‘Now I will never hear him.’ The man presented himself as a

voice. Not of course that I did not connect him with some sort of

action. Hadn’t I been told in all the tones of jealousy and admiration

that he had collected, bartered, swindled, or stolen more ivory than

all the other agents together? That was not the point. The point was in

his being a gifted creature, and that of all his gifts the one that

stood out preeminently, that carried with it a sense of real presence,

was his ability to talk, his words—the gift of expression, the

bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most

contemptible, the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from

the heart of an impenetrable darkness.

“The other shoe went flying unto the devil-god of that river. I

thought, ‘By Jove! it’s all over. We are too late; he has vanished—the

gift has vanished, by means of some spear, arrow, or club. I will never

hear that chap speak after all’—and my sorrow had a startling

extravagance of emotion, even such as I had noticed in the howling

sorrow of these savages in the bush. I couldn’t have felt more of

lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed

my destiny in life.... Why do you sigh in this beastly way, somebody?

Absurd? Well, absurd. Good Lord! mustn’t a man ever—Here, give me some

tobacco.”...

There was a pause of profound stillness, then a match flared, and

Marlow’s lean face appeared, worn, hollow, with downward folds and

dropped eyelids, with an aspect of concentrated attention; and as he

took vigorous draws at his pipe, it seemed to retreat and advance out

of the night in the regular flicker of tiny flame. The match went out.

“Absurd!” he cried. “This is the worst of trying to tell.... Here you

all are, each moored with two good addresses, like a hulk with two

anchors, a butcher round one corner, a policeman round another,

excellent appetites, and temperature normal—you hear—normal from year’s

end to year’s end. And you say, Absurd! Absurd be—exploded! Absurd! My

dear boys, what can you expect from a man who out of sheer nervousness

had just flung overboard a pair of new shoes! Now I think of it, it is

amazing I did not shed tears. I am, upon the whole, proud of my

fortitude. I was cut to the quick at the idea of having lost the

inestimable privilege of listening to the gifted Kurtz. Of course I was

wrong. The privilege was waiting for me. Oh, yes, I heard more than

enough. And I was right, too. A voice. He was very little more than a

voice. And I heard—him—it—this voice—other voices—all of them were so

little more than voices—and the memory of that time itself lingers

around me, impalpable, like a dying vibration of one immense jabber,

silly, atrocious, sordid, savage, or simply mean, without any kind of

sense. Voices, voices—even the girl herself—now—”

He was silent for a long time.

“I laid the ghost of his gifts at last with a lie,” he began, suddenly.

“Girl! What? Did I mention a girl? Oh, she is out of it—completely.

They—the women, I mean—are out of it—should be out of it. We must help

them to stay in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours gets

worse. Oh, she had to be out of it. You should have heard the

disinterred body of Mr. Kurtz saying, ‘My Intended.’ You would have

perceived directly then how completely she was out of it. And the lofty

frontal bone of Mr. Kurtz! They say the hair goes on growing sometimes,

but this—ah—specimen, was impressively bald. The wilderness had patted

him on the head, and, behold, it was like a ball—an ivory ball; it had

caressed him, and—lo!—he had withered; it had taken him, loved him,

embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his

soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish

initiation. He was its spoiled and pampered favourite. Ivory? I should

think so. Heaps of it, stacks of it. The old mud shanty was bursting

with it. You would think there was not a single tusk left either above

or below the ground in the whole country. ‘Mostly fossil,’ the manager

had remarked, disparagingly. It was no more fossil than I am; but they

call it fossil when it is dug up. It appears these niggers do bury the

tusks sometimes—but evidently they couldn’t bury this parcel deep

enough to save the gifted Mr. Kurtz from his fate. We filled the

steamboat with it, and had to pile a lot on the deck. Thus he could see

and enjoy as long as he could see, because the appreciation of this

favour had remained with him to the last. You should have heard him

say, ‘My ivory.’ Oh, yes, I heard him. ‘My Intended, my ivory, my

station, my river, my—’ everything belonged to him. It made me hold my

breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into a prodigious

peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places.

Everything belonged to him—but that was a trifle. The thing was to know

what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their

own. That was the reflection that made you creepy all over. It was

impossible—it was not good for one either—trying to imagine. He had

taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land—I mean literally. You

can’t understand. How could you?—with solid pavement under your feet,

surrounded by kind neighbours ready to cheer you or to fall on you,

stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy

terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums—how can you imagine

what particular region of the first ages a man’s untrammelled feet may

take him into by the way of solitude—utter solitude without a

policeman—by the way of silence—utter silence, where no warning voice

of a kind neighbour can be heard whispering of public opinion? These

little things make all the great difference. When they are gone you

must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your own capacity

for faithfulness. Of course you may be too much of a fool to go

wrong—too dull even to know you are being assaulted by the powers of

darkness. I take it, no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the

devil; the fool is too much of a fool, or the devil too much of a

devil—I don’t know which. Or you may be such a thunderingly exalted

creature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly

sights and sounds. Then the earth for you is only a standing place—and

whether to be like this is your loss or your gain I won’t pretend to

say. But most of us are neither one nor the other. The earth for us is

a place to live in, where we must put up with sights, with sounds, with

smells, too, by Jove!—breathe dead hippo, so to speak, and not be

contaminated. And there, don’t you see? Your strength comes in, the

faith in your ability for the digging of unostentatious holes to bury

the stuff in—your power of devotion, not to yourself, but to an

obscure, back-breaking business. And that’s difficult enough. Mind, I

am not trying to excuse or even explain—I am trying to account to

myself for—for—Mr. Kurtz—for the shade of Mr. Kurtz. This initiated

wraith from the back of Nowhere honoured me with its amazing confidence

before it vanished altogether. This was because it could speak English

to me. The original Kurtz had been educated partly in England, and—as

he was good enough to say himself—his sympathies were in the right

place. His mother was half-English, his father was half-French. All

Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz; and by and by I learned

that, most appropriately, the International Society for the Suppression

of Savage Customs had intrusted him with the making of a report, for

its future guidance. And he had written it, too. I’ve seen it. I’ve

read it. It was eloquent, vibrating with eloquence, but too

high-strung, I think. Seventeen pages of close writing he had found

time for! But this must have been before his—let us say—nerves, went

wrong, and caused him to preside at certain midnight dances ending with

unspeakable rites, which—as far as I reluctantly gathered from what I

heard at various times—were offered up to him—do you understand?—to Mr.

Kurtz himself. But it was a beautiful piece of writing. The opening

paragraph, however, in the light of later information, strikes me now

as ominous. He began with the argument that we whites, from the point

of development we had arrived at, ‘must necessarily appear to them

[savages] in the nature of supernatural beings—we approach them with

the might of a deity,’ and so on, and so on. ‘By the simple exercise of

our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded,’ etc.,

etc. From that point he soared and took me with him. The peroration was

magnificent, though difficult to remember, you know. It gave me the

notion of an exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence. It made

me tingle with enthusiasm. This was the unbounded power of eloquence—of

words—of burning noble words. There were no practical hints to

interrupt the magic current of phrases, unless a kind of note at the

foot of the last page, scrawled evidently much later, in an unsteady

hand, may be regarded as the exposition of a method. It was very

simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic

sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of

lightning in a serene sky: ‘Exterminate all the brutes!’ The curious

part was that he had apparently forgotten all about that valuable

postscriptum, because, later on, when he in a sense came to himself, he

repeatedly entreated me to take good care of ‘my pamphlet’ (he called

it), as it was sure to have in the future a good influence upon his

career. I had full information about all these things, and, besides, as

it turned out, I was to have the care of his memory. I’ve done enough

for it to give me the indisputable right to lay it, if I choose, for an

everlasting rest in the dust-bin of progress, amongst all the sweepings

and, figuratively speaking, all the dead cats of civilization. But

then, you see, I can’t choose. He won’t be forgotten. Whatever he was,

he was not common. He had the power to charm or frighten rudimentary

souls into an aggravated witch-dance in his honour; he could also fill

the small souls of the pilgrims with bitter misgivings: he had one

devoted friend at least, and he had conquered one soul in the world

that was neither rudimentary nor tainted with self-seeking. No; I can’t

forget him, though I am not prepared to affirm the fellow was exactly

worth the life we lost in getting to him. I missed my late helmsman

awfully—I missed him even while his body was still lying in the

pilot-house. Perhaps you will think it passing strange this regret for

a savage who was no more account than a grain of sand in a black

Sahara. Well, don’t you see, he had done something, he had steered; for

months I had him at my back—a help—an instrument. It was a kind of

partnership. He steered for me—I had to look after him, I worried about

his deficiencies, and thus a subtle bond had been created, of which I

only became aware when it was suddenly broken. And the intimate

profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to

this day in my memory—like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a

supreme moment.

“Poor fool! If he had only left that shutter alone. He had no

restraint, no restraint—just like Kurtz—a tree swayed by the wind. As

soon as I had put on a dry pair of slippers, I dragged him out, after

first jerking the spear out of his side, which operation I confess I

performed with my eyes shut tight. His heels leaped together over the

little doorstep; his shoulders were pressed to my breast; I hugged him

from behind desperately. Oh! he was heavy, heavy; heavier than any man

on earth, I should imagine. Then without more ado I tipped him

overboard. The current snatched him as though he had been a wisp of

grass, and I saw the body roll over twice before I lost sight of it for

ever. All the pilgrims and the manager were then congregated on the

awning-deck about the pilot-house, chattering at each other like a

flock of excited magpies, and there was a scandalized murmur at my

heartless promptitude. What they wanted to keep that body hanging about

for I can’t guess. Embalm it, maybe. But I had also heard another, and

a very ominous, murmur on the deck below. My friends the wood-cutters

were likewise scandalized, and with a better show of reason—though I

admit that the reason itself was quite inadmissible. Oh, quite! I had

made up my mind that if my late helmsman was to be eaten, the fishes

alone should have him. He had been a very second-rate helmsman while

alive, but now he was dead he might have become a first-class

temptation, and possibly cause some startling trouble. Besides, I was

anxious to take the wheel, the man in pink pyjamas showing himself a

hopeless duffer at the business.

“This I did directly the simple funeral was over. We were going

half-speed, keeping right in the middle of the stream, and I listened

to the talk about me. They had given up Kurtz, they had given up the

station; Kurtz was dead, and the station had been burnt—and so on—and

so on. The red-haired pilgrim was beside himself with the thought that

at least this poor Kurtz had been properly avenged. ‘Say! We must have

made a glorious slaughter of them in the bush. Eh? What do you think?

Say?’ He positively danced, the bloodthirsty little gingery beggar. And

he had nearly fainted when he saw the wounded man! I could not help

saying, ‘You made a glorious lot of smoke, anyhow.’ I had seen, from

the way the tops of the bushes rustled and flew, that almost all the

shots had gone too high. You can’t hit anything unless you take aim and

fire from the shoulder; but these chaps fired from the hip with their

eyes shut. The retreat, I maintained—and I was right—was caused by the

screeching of the steam whistle. Upon this they forgot Kurtz, and began

to howl at me with indignant protests.

“The manager stood by the wheel murmuring confidentially about the

necessity of getting well away down the river before dark at all

events, when I saw in the distance a clearing on the riverside and the

outlines of some sort of building. ‘What’s this?’ I asked. He clapped

his hands in wonder. ‘The station!’ he cried. I edged in at once, still

going half-speed.

“Through my glasses I saw the slope of a hill interspersed with rare

trees and perfectly free from undergrowth. A long decaying building on

the summit was half buried in the high grass; the large holes in the

peaked roof gaped black from afar; the jungle and the woods made a

background. There was no enclosure or fence of any kind; but there had

been one apparently, for near the house half-a-dozen slim posts

remained in a row, roughly trimmed, and with their upper ends

ornamented with round carved balls. The rails, or whatever there had

been between, had disappeared. Of course the forest surrounded all

that. The river-bank was clear, and on the waterside I saw a white man

under a hat like a cart-wheel beckoning persistently with his whole

arm. Examining the edge of the forest above and below, I was almost

certain I could see movements—human forms gliding here and there. I

steamed past prudently, then stopped the engines and let her drift

down. The man on the shore began to shout, urging us to land. ‘We have

been attacked,’ screamed the manager. ‘I know—I know. It’s all right,’

yelled back the other, as cheerful as you please. ‘Come along. It’s all

right. I am glad.’

“His aspect reminded me of something I had seen—something funny I had

seen somewhere. As I manoeuvred to get alongside, I was asking myself,

‘What does this fellow look like?’ Suddenly I got it. He looked like a

harlequin. His clothes had been made of some stuff that was brown

holland probably, but it was covered with patches all over, with bright

patches, blue, red, and yellow—patches on the back, patches on the

front, patches on elbows, on knees; coloured binding around his jacket,

scarlet edging at the bottom of his trousers; and the sunshine made him

look extremely gay and wonderfully neat withal, because you could see

how beautifully all this patching had been done. A beardless, boyish

face, very fair, no features to speak of, nose peeling, little blue

eyes, smiles and frowns chasing each other over that open countenance

like sunshine and shadow on a wind-swept plain. ‘Look out, captain!’ he

cried; ‘there’s a snag lodged in here last night.’ What! Another snag?

I confess I swore shamefully. I had nearly holed my cripple, to finish

off that charming trip. The harlequin on the bank turned his little

pug-nose up to me. ‘You English?’ he asked, all smiles. ‘Are you?’ I

shouted from the wheel. The smiles vanished, and he shook his head as

if sorry for my disappointment. Then he brightened up. ‘Never mind!’ he

cried encouragingly. ‘Are we in time?’ I asked. ‘He is up there,’ he

replied, with a toss of the head up the hill, and becoming gloomy all

of a sudden. His face was like the autumn sky, overcast one moment and

bright the next.

“When the manager, escorted by the pilgrims, all of them armed to the

teeth, had gone to the house this chap came on board. ‘I say, I don’t

like this. These natives are in the bush,’ I said. He assured me

earnestly it was all right. ‘They are simple people,’ he added; ‘well,

I am glad you came. It took me all my time to keep them off.’ ‘But you

said it was all right,’ I cried. ‘Oh, they meant no harm,’ he said; and

as I stared he corrected himself, ‘Not exactly.’ Then vivaciously, ‘My

faith, your pilot-house wants a clean-up!’ In the next breath he

advised me to keep enough steam on the boiler to blow the whistle in

case of any trouble. ‘One good screech will do more for you than all

your rifles. They are simple people,’ he repeated. He rattled away at

such a rate he quite overwhelmed me. He seemed to be trying to make up

for lots of silence, and actually hinted, laughing, that such was the

case. ‘Don’t you talk with Mr. Kurtz?’ I said. ‘You don’t talk with

that man—you listen to him,’ he exclaimed with severe exaltation. ‘But

now—’ He waved his arm, and in the twinkling of an eye was in the

uttermost depths of despondency. In a moment he came up again with a

jump, possessed himself of both my hands, shook them continuously,

while he gabbled: ‘Brother sailor... honour... pleasure... delight...

introduce myself... Russian... son of an arch-priest... Government of

Tambov... What? Tobacco! English tobacco; the excellent English

tobacco! Now, that’s brotherly. Smoke? Where’s a sailor that does not

smoke?”

“The pipe soothed him, and gradually I made out he had run away from

school, had gone to sea in a Russian ship; ran away again; served some

time in English ships; was now reconciled with the arch-priest. He made

a point of that. ‘But when one is young one must see things, gather

experience, ideas; enlarge the mind.’ ‘Here!’ I interrupted. ‘You can

never tell! Here I met Mr. Kurtz,’ he said, youthfully solemn and

reproachful. I held my tongue after that. It appears he had persuaded a

Dutch trading-house on the coast to fit him out with stores and goods,

and had started for the interior with a light heart and no more idea of

what would happen to him than a baby. He had been wandering about that

river for nearly two years alone, cut off from everybody and

everything. ‘I am not so young as I look. I am twenty-five,’ he said.

‘At first old Van Shuyten would tell me to go to the devil,’ he

narrated with keen enjoyment; ‘but I stuck to him, and talked and

talked, till at last he got afraid I would talk the hind-leg off his

favourite dog, so he gave me some cheap things and a few guns, and told

me he hoped he would never see my face again. Good old Dutchman, Van

Shuyten. I’ve sent him one small lot of ivory a year ago, so that he

can’t call me a little thief when I get back. I hope he got it. And for

the rest I don’t care. I had some wood stacked for you. That was my old

house. Did you see?’

“I gave him Towson’s book. He made as though he would kiss me, but

restrained himself. ‘The only book I had left, and I thought I had lost

it,’ he said, looking at it ecstatically. ‘So many accidents happen to

a man going about alone, you know. Canoes get upset sometimes—and

sometimes you’ve got to clear out so quick when the people get angry.’

He thumbed the pages. ‘You made notes in Russian?’ I asked. He nodded.

‘I thought they were written in cipher,’ I said. He laughed, then

became serious. ‘I had lots of trouble to keep these people off,’ he

said. ‘Did they want to kill you?’ I asked. ‘Oh, no!’ he cried, and

checked himself. ‘Why did they attack us?’ I pursued. He hesitated,

then said shamefacedly, ‘They don’t want him to go.’ ‘Don’t they?’ I

said curiously. He nodded a nod full of mystery and wisdom. ‘I tell

you,’ he cried, ‘this man has enlarged my mind.’ He opened his arms

wide, staring at me with his little blue eyes that were perfectly

round.”

III

“I looked at him, lost in astonishment. There he was before me, in

motley, as though he had absconded from a troupe of mimes,

enthusiastic, fabulous. His very existence was improbable,

inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem.

It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in

getting so far, how he had managed to remain—why he did not instantly

disappear. ‘I went a little farther,’ he said, ‘then still a little

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 appearances indestructible solely by the

virtue of his few years and of his unreflecting audacity. I was seduced

into something like admiration—like envy. Glamour urged him on, glamour

kept him unscathed. He surely wanted nothing from the wilderness but

space to breathe in and to push on through. His need was to exist, and

to move onwards at the greatest possible risk, and with a maximum of

privation. If the absolutely pure, uncalculating, unpractical spirit of

adventure had ever ruled a human being, it ruled this bepatched youth.

I almost envied him the possession of this modest and clear flame. It

seemed to have consumed all thought of self so completely, that even

while he was talking to you, you forgot that it was 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 accepted it with a sort of eager fatalism. I must say that

to me it appeared about the most dangerous thing in every way he had

come upon so far.

“They had come together unavoidably, like two ships becalmed near each

other, and lay rubbing sides at last. I suppose Kurtz wanted an

audience, because on a certain occasion, when encamped in the forest,

they had talked all night, or more probably Kurtz had talked. ‘We

talked of everything,’ he said, quite transported at the recollection.

‘I forgot there was such a thing as sleep. The night did not seem to

last an hour. Everything! Everything!... Of love, too.’ ‘Ah, he talked

to you of love!’ I said, much amused. ‘It isn’t what you think,’ he

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 impenetrable to human thought, so pitiless to human weakness.

‘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? exploring 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 reluctance to speak of Kurtz. The man filled

his life, occupied his thoughts, swayed his emotions. ‘What can you

expect?’ he burst out; ‘he came to them with thunder and lightning, you

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 had heard him

talk, only two days ago, I wouldn’t dare hint at such a thing.... I had

taken up my binoculars while we talked, and was looking at the shore,

sweeping the limit of the forest at each side and at the back of the

house. The consciousness of there being people in that bush, so silent,

so 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 carefully from post to post with my glass, and I saw my mistake.

These round knobs were not ornamental but symbolic; they were

expressive and puzzling, striking and disturbing—food for thought and

also for vultures if there had been any looking down from the sky; but

at all events for such ants as were industrious enough to ascend the

pole. They would have been even more impressive, those heads on the

stakes, if their faces had not been turned to the house. Only one, the

first I had made out, was facing my way. I was not so shocked as you

may think. The start back I had given was really nothing but a movement

of surprise. I had expected to see a knob of wood there, you know. I

returned deliberately to the first I had seen—and there it was, black,

dried, sunken, with closed eyelids—a head that seemed to sleep at the

top of that pole, and, with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow

white line of the teeth, was smiling, too, smiling continuously at some

endless and jocose dream of that eternal slumber.

“I am not disclosing any trade secrets. In fact, the manager said

afterwards that Mr. Kurtz’s methods had ruined the district. I have no

opinion on that point, but I want you clearly to understand that there

was nothing exactly profitable in these heads being there. They only

showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his

various lusts, that there was something wanting in him—some small

matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under

his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I

can’t say. I think the knowledge came to him at last—only at the very

last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him

a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had

whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of

which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great

solitude—and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed

loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.... I put down the

glass, and the head that had appeared near enough to be spoken to

seemed at once to have leaped away from me into inaccessible 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

extraordinary. The camps of these people surrounded the place, and the

chiefs came every day to see him. They would crawl.... ‘I don’t want to

know anything of the ceremonies used when approaching Mr. Kurtz,’ I

shouted. Curious, this feeling that came over me that such details

would be more intolerable than those heads drying on the stakes under

Mr. Kurtz’s windows. After all, that was only a savage sight, while I

seemed at one bound to have been transported into some lightless region

of subtle horrors, where pure, uncomplicated savagery was a positive

relief, being something that had a right to 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,

justice, conduct of life—or what not. If it had come to crawling before

Mr. Kurtz, he crawled as much as the veriest savage of them all. I had

no idea of the conditions, he said: these heads were the heads of

rebels. I shocked him excessively by laughing. Rebels! What would be

the next definition I was to hear? There had been enemies, criminals,

workers—and these were rebels. Those rebellious heads looked very

subdued to me on their sticks. ‘You don’t know how such a life tries a

man like Kurtz,’ cried Kurtz’s last disciple. ‘Well, and you?’ I said.

‘I! I! I am a simple man. I have no great thoughts. I want nothing from

anybody. How can you compare me to...?’ His feelings were too much for

speech, and suddenly he broke down. ‘I don’t understand,’ he groaned.

‘I’ve been doing my best to keep him alive, and that’s enough. I had no

hand in all this. I have no abilities. There hasn’t been a drop of

medicine or a mouthful of invalid food for months here. He was

shamefully abandoned. A man like this, with such ideas. Shamefully!

Shamefully! 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 clearing 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

situation, as if to be at the mercy of that atrocious phantom 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 looked 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 perceptible movement of retreat, as if the forest

that had ejected these beings so suddenly had drawn them in again as

the breath is drawn in a 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 expression. It was not so much the exhaustion of disease. He did

not seem in pain. This shadow looked satiated and calm, as though for

the moment it had had its fill of all the emotions.

“He rustled one of the letters, and looking straight in my face said,

‘I am glad.’ Somebody had been writing to him about me. These special

recommendations were turning up again. The volume of tone he emitted

without effort, almost without the trouble of moving his lips, amazed

me. A voice! a voice! It was grave, profound, vibrating, while the man

did not seem capable of a whisper. However, he had enough strength in

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 staring at the shore. I followed the direction of his

glance.

“Dark human shapes could be made out in the distance, flitting

indistinctly against the gloomy border of the forest, and near the

river two bronze figures, leaning on tall spears, stood in the sunlight

under fantastic 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 cloths,

treading the earth proudly, with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous

ornaments. She carried her head high; her hair was done in the shape of

a helmet; she had brass leggings to the knee, brass wire gauntlets to

the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable necklaces of

glass beads on her neck; bizarre things, charms, gifts of 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 shadows 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 understand the dialect of

this tribe. Luckily for me, I fancy Kurtz felt too ill that day to

care, or there would have been mischief. I don’t understand.... 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 notions—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. Cautiously,

cautiously—that’s my principle. We must be cautious yet. The district

is closed to us for a time. Deplorable! Upon the whole, the trade will

suffer. I don’t deny there is a remarkable quantity of 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 judgment. It is my duty to point it out in the proper quarter.’

‘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 remarkable man,’ I said with emphasis. He started,

dropped on me a 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 victorious 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. Kurtz 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 consequences. ‘He suspected there was an active ill-will

towards him on the part of these white men that—’ ‘You are right,’ I

said, remembering a certain conversation I had overheard. ‘The manager

thinks you ought to be hanged.’ He showed a concern at this

intelligence which amused me at first. ‘I had better get out of the way

quietly,’ he said earnestly. ‘I can do no more for Kurtz now, and they

would soon find some excuse. What’s to stop them? There’s a military

post three hundred miles from here.’ ‘Well, upon my word,’ said I,

‘perhaps you had better go if you have any friends amongst the savages

near by.’ ‘Plenty,’ he said. ‘They are simple people—and I want

nothing, you know.’ He stood biting his lip, then: ‘I don’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 waiting 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 sandalwise under his bare feet. I rooted out an old

pair, at which he looked with admiration before tucking it under his

left arm. One of his pockets (bright red) was bulging with cartridges,

from the other (dark blue) peeped ‘Towson’s Inquiry,’ etc., etc. He

seemed to think himself excellently well equipped for a renewed

encounter with the wilderness. ‘Ah! I’ll never, never meet such a man

again. You ought to have heard him recite 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 warning came to my mind with

its hint of danger that seemed, in the starred darkness, real enough to

make me get up for the purpose of having a look round. On the hill a

big fire burned, illuminating fitfully a crooked corner of the

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 monotonous beating of a

big drum filled the air with muffled shocks and a lingering vibration.

A steady droning sound of many men chanting each to himself some weird

incantation came out from the black, flat wall of the woods as the

humming of bees comes out of a hive, and had a strange narcotic effect

upon my 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 completely 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 received, as if something altogether monstrous, intolerable to

thought and odious to the soul, had been thrust upon me unexpectedly.

This lasted of course the merest fraction of a second, and then the

usual sense of commonplace, deadly danger, the possibility of a sudden

onslaught and massacre, or something of the kind, which I saw

impending, was positively welcome and 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 improper person to be sitting

at the other end of such an affair. I saw a row of pilgrims squirting

lead in the air out of Winchesters held to the hip. I thought I would

never get back to the steamer, and imagined myself living alone and

unarmed in the woods to an advanced age. Such silly 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. Suppose 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 immense plans,’ he muttered irresolutely. ‘Yes,’ said I; ‘but

if you try to shout I’ll smash your head with—’ There was not a stick

or a stone near. ‘I will throttle you for good,’ I corrected myself. ‘I

was on the threshold of great things,’ he pleaded, in a voice of

longing, with a wistfulness of tone that made my blood run cold. ‘And

now for this stupid scoundrel—’ ‘Your success in Europe is assured in

any case,’ I affirmed steadily. I did not want to have the throttling

of him, you understand—and indeed it would have been very little use

for any practical purpose. 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 monstrous passions. This alone, I was convinced, had

driven him out to the edge of the forest, to the bush, towards the

gleam of fires, the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations;

this alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of

permitted aspirations. And, don’t you see, the terror of the position

was not in being knocked on the head—though I had a very lively sense

of that danger, too—but in this, that I had to deal with a being to

whom I could not appeal in the name of anything high or low. I had,

even like the niggers, to invoke 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

pronounced—but what’s the good? They were common everyday words—the

familiar, vague sounds exchanged on every waking day of life. But what

of that? They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness

of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares. Soul! If

anybody 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 unavoidable noise. But his soul was mad. Being alone in the

wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens! I tell you,

it had gone mad. I 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 struggling

blindly with itself. I kept my head pretty well; but when I had him at

last stretched on the couch, I wiped my forehead, while my legs shook

under me as though I had carried half a ton on my back down that hill.

And yet I had only supported him, his bony arm clasped round my

neck—and he 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

splashing, 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 bodies; they shook towards the fierce

river-demon a bunch of black feathers, a mangy skin with a pendent

tail—something that looked a dried gourd; they shouted periodically

together strings of amazing words that resembled no sounds of human

language; and the deep murmurs of the crowd, interrupted suddenly, were

like the 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 something, and all that wild mob took up the shout

in a roaring chorus of articulated, rapid, breathless utterance.

“‘Do you understand this?’ I asked.

“He kept on looking out past me with fiery, longing eyes, with a

mingled expression of wistfulness and hate. He made no answer, but I

saw a smile, a smile of indefinable meaning, appear on his 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 disconsolately. I pulled the string time

after time. They broke and ran, they leaped, they crouched, they

swerved, they dodged the flying terror of the sound. The three red

chaps had fallen flat, face down on the shore, as though they had been

shot dead. Only the barbarous and superb woman did not so much as

flinch, and stretched tragically her 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 obsequiously 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 penetrated 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 desired to have kings meet

him at railway-stations on his return from some ghastly Nowhere, where

he intended to accomplish great things. ‘You show them you have in you

something that is really profitable, and then there will be no limits

to the recognition of your ability,’ he would say. ‘Of course you must

take care of the motives—right 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 another 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

photograph—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 fragment 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 startled to hear him say a

little tremulously, ‘I am lying here in the dark waiting for death.’

The light was within a foot of his eyes. I forced myself to murmur,

‘Oh, 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

supreme 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 pilgrims 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 ignored. He

leaned back, serene, with that peculiar smile of his sealing the

unexpressed depths of his meanness. A continuous shower of small flies

streamed upon the lamp, upon the cloth, upon our hands and faces.

Suddenly the manager’s boy put his insolent black head in the doorway,

and said in a tone of scathing contempt:

“‘Mistah Kurtz—he dead.’

“All the pilgrims rushed out to see. I remained, and went on with my

dinner. I believe I was considered brutally callous. However, I did not

eat much. There was a lamp in 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

ultimate 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 understand better the meaning of his stare,

that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to

embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts

that beat in the 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 without form

filled with physical pain, and a careless contempt 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 permitted to draw back my

hesitating foot. And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps

all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed

into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the

threshold of the invisible. Perhaps! I like to think my summing-up

would not have been a word of careless contempt. Better his cry—much

better. It was an affirmation, a moral victory paid for by innumerable

defeats, by abominable terrors, by abominable satisfactions. But it was

a victory! That is why I have remained loyal to Kurtz to the last, and

even beyond, when a long time after I heard once more, not his own

voice, but the echo of his magnificent eloquence thrown to me from a

soul as translucently pure as a cliff of crystal.

“No, they did not bury me, though there is a period of time which I

remember mistily, with a shuddering wonder, like a passage through some

inconceivable world that had no hope in it and no desire. I found

myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people

hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other,

to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to

dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my

thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an

irritating 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 admit my behaviour was

inexcusable, 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 knowledge of unexplored

regions must have been necessarily extensive and peculiar—owing to his

great abilities and to the deplorable circumstances in which he had

been placed: therefore—’ I assured him Mr. Kurtz’s knowledge, however

extensive, did not bear upon the problems of commerce or

administration. He invoked then the name of science. ‘It would be an

incalculable loss if,’ 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 moments. Incidentally he gave me to understand that

Kurtz had been essentially a great musician. ‘There was the making of

an immense success,’ said the man, who was an organist, I believe, with

lank 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, bearing off some family letters and

memoranda without importance. Ultimately a journalist anxious to know

something of the fate of his ‘dear colleague’ turned up. This visitor

informed me Kurtz’s proper sphere ought to have been politics ‘on the

popular side.’ He had furry straight eyebrows, bristly hair cropped

short, an eyeglass on a broad ribbon, and, becoming expansive,

confessed his opinion that Kurtz really couldn’t write a bit—‘but

heavens! how that man could talk. He electrified large meetings. He had

faith—don’t you see?—he had the faith. He could get himself to believe

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 letters and the girl’s

portrait. She struck me as beautiful—I mean she had a beautiful

expression. I know that the sunlight can be made to lie, too, yet one

felt that no manipulation of light and pose could have conveyed the

delicate shade of truthfulness upon those features. She seemed ready to

listen without mental reservation, without suspicion, without a thought

for herself. I concluded I would go and give her back her portrait and

those letters myself. Curiosity? Yes; and also some other feeling

perhaps. All that had been Kurtz’s had passed out of my hands: his

soul, his body, his station, his plans, his ivory, his career. There

remained only his memory and his 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

fulfilment 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 memories of the dead that

accumulate in every man’s life—a vague impress on the brain of shadows

that had fallen on it in their swift and final passage; but before the

high and ponderous door, between the tall houses of a street as still

and decorous as a 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 insatiable of splendid appearances,

of frightful realities; a shadow darker than the shadow of the night,

and draped nobly in the folds of a gorgeous eloquence. The vision

seemed to enter the house with 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 the 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 remembered his abject pleading, his abject

threats, the colossal scale of his vile desires, the meanness, the

torment, the tempestuous anguish of his soul. And later on I seemed to

see his collected languid manner, when he said one day, ‘This lot of

ivory now is really mine. The Company did not pay for it. I collected

it myself at a very great personal risk. I am afraid they will try to

claim it as theirs though. H’m. It is a difficult case. What do you

think I ought to 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, condemning, 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 drawing-room with three

long windows from floor to ceiling that were like three luminous and

bedraped columns. The bent gilt legs and backs of the furniture shone

in indistinct curves. The tall marble fireplace had a cold and

monumental whiteness. A grand piano stood massively in a corner; with

dark gleams on the flat surfaces like a 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 fidelity, for

belief, for suffering. The room seemed to have grown darker, as if all

the sad light of the cloudy evening had taken refuge on her forehead.

This fair hair, this pale visage, this pure brow, seemed surrounded by

an ashy halo from which the dark eyes looked out at me. Their glance

was guileless, profound, confident, and trustful. She carried her

sorrowful head as though she were proud of that sorrow, as though she

would say, ‘I—I alone know how to mourn for him as he deserves.’ But

while we were still shaking hands, such a look of awful desolation came

upon her face that I perceived she was one of those creatures that are

not the playthings of Time. For her he had died only yesterday. And, by

Jove! the impression was so powerful that for me, too, he seemed to

have died only 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 impossible to know him and

not to admire him. Was it?’

“‘He was a remarkable man,’ I said, unsteadily. Then before the

appealing fixity of her gaze, that seemed to 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 true! But when you think that no one knew him

so well as I! I had all his noble confidence. I knew him best.’

“‘You knew him best,’ I repeated. And perhaps she did. But with every

word spoken the room was growing darker, and only her forehead, smooth

and white, remained illumined by the inextinguishable 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 sympathy; she talked as thirsty men drink. I had

heard that her engagement with Kurtz had been disapproved by her

people. He wasn’t rich enough or something. And indeed I don’t know

whether he had not been a pauper all his life. He had given me some

reason to infer that it was his impatience of comparative poverty that

drove him out there.

“‘... Who was not his friend who had heard him speak once?’ she was

saying. ‘He drew men towards him by what was best in them.’ She looked

at me with intensity. ‘It is the gift of the great,’ she went on, and

the sound of her low voice seemed to have the accompaniment of all the

other sounds, full of mystery, desolation, and sorrow, I had ever

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 herself with beautiful

generosity; then added in a murmur, ‘To the world.’ By the last gleams

of twilight I could see the glitter of her eyes, full of 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 shall 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 of the infernal stream, the stream of darkness.

She said suddenly very low, ‘He died as he lived.’

“‘His end,’ said I, with dull anger stirring in me, ‘was in every way

worthy of his life.’

“‘And I was not with him,’ she murmured. My anger subsided before a

feeling of infinite pity.

“‘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—himself. 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

understand him as I would have understood. Perhaps no one to hear....’

“‘To the very end,’ I said, shakily. ‘I heard his very last words....’

I stopped in a fright.

“‘Repeat them,’ she 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 persistent 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 tranquil 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.