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And
at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from
glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if
about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom
brooding over a crowd of men.
Forthwith
a change came over the waters, and the serenity became less brilliant but
more profound. The old river in
its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good
service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil
dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a
short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the august light of
abiding memories. And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the
phrase goes, "followed the sea" with reverence and affection, that
to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames.
The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with
memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles
of the sea. It had known and served all the men of whom the nation is proud,
from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titled and
untitled--the great knights-errant of the sea. It had borne all the ships
whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from the GOLDEN
HIND returning with her rotund flanks full of treasure, to be visited by the
Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale, to the EREBUS and
TERROR, bound on other conquests-- and that never returned.
It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from Deptford,
from Greenwich, from Erith-- the adventurers and the settlers; kings' ships
and the ships of men on 'Change; captains, admirals, the dark
"interlopers" of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned
"generals" of East India fleets.
Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that
stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might
within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire.
What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the
mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed of
commonwealths, the germs of empires.
The
sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear along the
shore. The Chapman light-house,
a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone strongly.
Lights of ships moved in the fairway--a great stir of lights going up
and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the
monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in
sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.
"And
this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places
of the earth."
He
was the only man of us who still "followed the sea." The worst
that could be said of him was that he did not represent his class.
He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while most seamen lead,
if one may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the
stay-at-home order, and their home is always with them--the ship; and so is
their country--the sea. One ship is very much like another, and the sea is
always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign
shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past,
veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for
there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which
is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny. For the
rest, after his hours of work, a casual stroll or a casual spree on shore
suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole continent, and generally he
finds the secret not worth knowing. The yarns of seamen have a direct
simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked
nut. But Marlow was not typical
(if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an
episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which
brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of
these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral
illumination of moonshine.
His
remark did not seem at all surprising.
It was just like Marlow. It was accepted in silence.
No one took the trouble to grunt even; and presently he said, very
slow--"I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came
here, nineteen hundred years ago--the other day. . . . Light came out of
this river since--you say Knights? Yes;
but it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the
clouds. We live in the flicker--may it last as long as the old earth keeps
rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine--what d'ye call
'em?--trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north; run
overland across the Gauls in a hurry; put in charge of one of these craft
the legionaries--a wonderful lot of handy men they must have been, too--used
to build, apparently by the hundred, in a month or two, if we may believe
what we read. Imagine him here--the very end of the world, a sea the colour
of lead, a sky the colour of smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as a
concertina-- and going up this river with stores, or orders, or what you
like. Sand-banks, marshes, forests, savages,--precious little to eat fit for
a civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink.
No Falernian wine here, no going ashore.
Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in
a bundle of hay--cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death--death
skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush. They must have been dying
like flies here. Oh, yes--he
did it. Did it very well, too, no doubt, and without thinking much about it
either, except afterwards to brag of what he had gone through in his time,
perhaps. They were men enough to face the darkness.
And perhaps he was cheered by keeping his eye on a chance of
promotion to the fleet at Ravenna by and by, if he had good friends in Rome
and survived the awful climate. Or think of a decent young citizen in a
toga--perhaps too much dice, you know--coming out here in the train of some
prefect, or tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his fortunes.
Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post
feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him--all that
mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles,
in the hearts of wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries.
He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also
detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The
fascination of the abomination--you know, imagine the growing regrets, the
longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate."
He
paused.
"Mind,"
he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of the hand
outwards, so that, with his legs folded before him, he had the pose of a
Buddha preaching in European clothes and without a lotus-flower--"Mind,
none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves us is efficiency--the
devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not much account, really.
They were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze,
and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors, and for that you want
only brute force-- nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your
strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They
grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just
robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at
it blind--as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness.
The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from
those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than
ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.
What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a
sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the
idea--something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice
to. . . ."
He
broke off. Flames glided in the
river, small green flames, red flames, white flames, pursuing, overtaking,
joining, crossing each other-- then separating slowly or hastily.
The traffic of the great city went on in the deepening night upon the
sleepless river. We looked on,
waiting patiently--there was nothing else to do till the end of the flood;
but it was only after a long silence, when he said, in a hesitating voice,
"I suppose you fellows remember I did once turn fresh-water sailor for
a bit," that we knew we were fated, before the ebb began to run, to
hear about one of Marlow's inconclusive experiences.
"I
don't want to bother you much with what happened to me personally," he
began, showing in this remark the weakness of many tellers of tales who seem
so often unaware of what their audience would like best to hear; "yet
to understand the effect of it on me you ought to know how I got out there,
what I saw, how I went up that river to the place where I first met the poor
chap. It was the farthest point
of navigation and the culminating point of my experience. It seemed somehow
to throw a kind of light on everything about me-- and into my thoughts.
It was sombre enough, too--and pitiful-- not extraordinary in any
way--not very clear either. No, not very clear. And yet it seemed to throw a kind of
light.
"I
had then, as you remember, just returned to London after a lot of Indian
Ocean, Pacific, China Seas--a regular dose of the East--six years or so, and
I was loafing about, hindering you fellows in your work and invading your
homes, just as though I had got a heavenly mission to civilize you. It was
very fine for a time, but after a bit I did get tired of resting. Then I
began to look for a ship--I should think the hardest work on earth. But the
ships wouldn't even look at me. And
I got tired of that game, too.
"Now
when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at
South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories
of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and
when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all look
that) I would put my finger on it and say, `When I grow up I will go there.'
The North Pole was one of these places, I remember.
Well, I haven't been there yet, and shall not try now.
The glamour's off. Other places were scattered about the hemispheres.
I have been in some of them, and . . . well, we won't talk about
that. But there was one yet--the biggest, the most blank, so to speak-- that
I had a hankering after.
"True,
by this time it was not a blank space any more. It had got filled since my
boyhood with rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased to be a blank space
of delightful mystery-- a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. It
had become a place of darkness. But
there was in it one river especially, a mighty big river, that you could see
on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea,
its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the
depths of the land. And as I looked at the map of it in a shop-window, it
fascinated me as a snake would a bird--a silly little bird. Then I
remembered there was a big concern, a Company for trade on that river.
Dash it all! I thought
to myself, they can't trade without using some kind of craft on that lot of
fresh water--steamboats! Why
shouldn't I try to get charge of one? I went on along Fleet Street, but
could not shake off the idea. The snake had charmed me.
"You
understand it was a Continental concern, that Trading society; but I have a
lot of relations living on the Continent, because it's cheap and not so
nasty as it looks, they say.
"I
am sorry to own I began to worry them.
This was already a fresh departure for me. I was not used to get things that way, you know. I always
went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go. I wouldn't
have believed it of myself; but, then--you see--I felt somehow I must get
there by hook or by crook. So I
worried them. The men said `My dear fellow,' and did nothing.
Then--would you believe it?--I tried the women.
I, Charlie Marlow, set the women to work-- to get a job.
Heavens! Well, you see,
the notion drove me. I had an aunt, a dear enthusiastic soul.
She wrote: `It will be
delightful. I am ready to do anything, anything for you.
It is a glorious idea. I know the wife of a very high personage in
the Administration, and also a man who has lots of influence with,' etc. She was determined to make no end of fuss to get me appointed
skipper of a river steamboat, if such was my fancy.
"I
got my appointment--of course; and I got it very quick. It appears the
Company had received news that one of their captains had been killed in a
scuffle with the natives. This was my chance, and it made me the more
anxious to go. It was only months and months afterwards, when I made the
attempt to recover what was left of the body, that I heard the original
quarrel arose from a misunderstanding about some hens. Yes, two black hens.
Fresleven--that was the fellow's name, a Dane--thought himself
wronged somehow in the bargain, so he went ashore and started to hammer the
chief of the village with a stick. Oh,
it didn't surprise me in the least to hear this, and at the same time to be
told that Fresleven was the gentlest, quietest creature that ever walked on
two legs. No doubt he was; but he had been a couple of years already out
there engaged in the noble cause, you know, and he probably felt the need at
last of asserting his self-respect in some way. Therefore he whacked the old
nigger mercilessly, while a big crowd of his people watched him,
thunderstruck, till some man-- I was told the chief's son--in desperation at
hearing the old chap yell, made a tentative jab with a spear at the white
man-- and of course it went quite easy between the shoulder-blades. Then the
whole population cleared into the forest, expecting all kinds of calamities
to happen, while, on the other hand, the steamer Fresleven commanded left
also in a bad panic, in charge of the engineer, I believe.
Afterwards nobody seemed to trouble much about Fresleven's remains,
till I got out and stepped into his shoes.
I couldn't let it rest, though; but when an opportunity offered at
last to meet my predecessor, the grass growing through his ribs was tall
enough to hide his bones. They were all there.
The supernatural being had not been touched after he fell.
And the village was deserted, the huts gaped black, rotting, all
askew within the fallen enclosures. A calamity had come to it, sure enough. The people had vanished. Mad terror had scattered them, men,
women, and children, through the bush, and they had never returned. What
became of the hens I don't know either.
I should think the cause of progress got them, anyhow. However, through this glorious affair I got my appointment,
before I had fairly begun to hope for it.
"I
flew around like mad to get ready, and before forty-eight hours I was
crossing the Channel to show myself to my employers, and sign the contract.
In a very few hours I arrived in a city that always makes me think of
a whited sepulchre. Prejudice
no doubt. I had no difficulty in finding the Company's offices.
It was the biggest thing in the town, and everybody I met was full of
it. They were going to run an over-sea empire, and make no end of coin by
trade.
"A
narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, high houses, innumerable windows
with venetian blinds, a dead silence, grass sprouting right and left,
immense double doors standing ponderously ajar. I slipped through one of
these cracks, went up a swept and ungarnished staircase, as arid as a
desert, and opened the first door I came to. Two women, one fat and the
other slim, sat on straw-bottomed chairs, knitting black wool.
The slim one got up and walked straight at me-- still knitting with
downcast eyes--and only just as I began to think of getting out of her way,
as you would for a somnambulist, stood still, and looked up.
Her dress was as plain as an umbrella-cover, and she turned round
without a word and preceded me into a waiting-room. I gave my name, and
looked about. Deal table in the middle, plain chairs all round the walls, on
one end a large shining map, marked with all the colours of a rainbow. There
was a vast amount of red--good to see at any time, because one knows that
some real work is done in there, a deuce of a lot of blue, a little green,
smears of orange, and, on the East Coast, a purple patch, to show where the
jolly pioneers of progress drink the jolly lager-beer. However, I wasn't
going into any of these. I was going into the yellow. Dead in the centre. And
the river was there--fascinating--deadly--like a snake.
Ough! A door opened, ya
white-haired secretarial head, but wearing a compassionate expression,
appeared, and a skinny forefinger beckoned me into the sanctuary. Its light
was dim, and a heavy writing-desk squatted in the middle. From behind that
structure came out an impression of pale plumpness in a frock-coat. The
great man himself. He was five
feet six, I should judge, and had his grip on the handle-end of ever so many
millions. He shook hands, I
fancy, murmured vaguely, was satisfied with my French.
BON VOYAGE.
"In
about forty-five seconds I found myself again in the waiting-room with the
compassionate secretary, who, full of desolation and sympathy, made me sign
some document. I believe I
undertook amongst other things not to disclose any trade secrets.
Well, I am not going to.
"I
began to feel slightly uneasy. You
know I am not used to such ceremonies, and there was something ominous in
the atmosphere. It was just as though I had been let into some conspiracy--
I don't know--something not quite right; and I was glad to get out. In the
outer room the two women knitted black wool feverishly. People were
arriving, and the younger one was walking back and forth introducing them.
The old one sat on her chair. Her flat cloth slippers were propped up
on a foot-warmer, and a cat reposed on her lap.
She wore a starched white affair on her head, had a wart on one
cheek, and silver-rimmed spectacles hung on the tip of her nose.
She glanced at me above the glasses. The swift and indifferent
placidity of that look troubled me. Two youths with foolish and cheery
countenances were being piloted over, and she threw at them the same quick
glance of unconcerned wisdom. She seemed to know all about them and about
me, too. An eerie feeling came over me.
She seemed uncanny and fateful. Often far away there I thought of
these two, guarding the door of Darkness, knitting black wool as for a warm
pall, one introducing, introducing continuously to the unknown, the other
scrutinizing the cheery and foolish faces with unconcerned old eyes.
AVE! Old knitter of
black wool. MORITURI TE
SALUTANT. Not many of those she looked at ever saw her again--not half, by a
long way.
"There
was yet a visit to the doctor. `A
simple formality,' assured me the secretary, with an air of taking an
immense part in all my sorrows. Accordingly a young chap wearing his hat
over the left eyebrow, some clerk I suppose--there must have been clerks in
the business, though the house was as still as a house in a city of the
dead-- came from somewhere up-stairs, and led me forth.
He was shabby and careless, with inkstains on the sleeves of his
jacket, and his cravat was large and billowy, under a chin shaped like the
toe of an old boot. It was a
little too early for the doctor, so I proposed a drink, and thereupon he
developed a vein of joviality. As we sat over our vermouths he glorified the
Company's business, and by and by I expressed casually my surprise at him
not going out there. He became
very cool and collected all at once. `I am not such a fool as I look, quoth
Plato to his disciples,' he said sententiously, emptied his glass with great
resolution, and we rose.
"The
old doctor felt my pulse, evidently thinking of something else the while.
`Good, good for there,' he mumbled, and then with a certain eagerness
asked me whether I would let him measure my head.
Rather surprised, I said Yes, when he produced a thing like calipers
and got the dimensions back and front and every way, taking notes carefully.
He was an unshaven little man in a threadbare coat like a gaberdine, with
his feet in slippers, and I thought him a harmless fool. `I always ask
leave, in the interests of science, to measure the crania of those going out
there,' he said. `And when they
come back, too?' I asked.
`Oh, I never see them,' he remarked; `and, moreover, the changes take
place inside, you know.' He smiled, as if at some quiet joke.
`So you are going out there. Famous.
Interesting, too.' He gave me a searching glance, and made another note.
`Ever any madness in your family?' he asked, in a matter-of-fact
tone. I felt very annoyed. `Is
that question in the interests of science, too?' `It would be,' he said,
without taking notice of my irritation, `interesting for science to watch
the mental changes of individuals, on the spot, but . . .' `Are you an
alienist?' I interrupted. `Every
doctor should be--a little,' answered that original, imperturbably.
`I have a little theory which you messieurs who go out there must
help me to prove. This is my share in the advantages my country shall reap
from the possession of such a magnificent dependency. The mere wealth I
leave to others. Pardon my
questions, but you are the first Englishman coming under my observation . .
.' I hastened to assure him I was not in the least typical. `If I were,'
said I, `I wouldn't be talking like this with you.' `What you say is rather
profound, and probably erroneous,' he said, with a laugh.
`Avoid irritation more than exposure to the sun.
Adieu. How do you English say, eh?
Good-bye. Ah! Good-bye. Adieu. In
the tropics one must before everything keep calm.'
. . . He lifted a warning forefinger. . . . `DU CALME, DU CALME.
ADIEU.'
"One
thing more remained to do--say good-bye to my excellent aunt. I found her
triumphant. I had a cup of
tea--the last decent cup of tea for many days--and in a room that most
soothingly looked just as you would expect a lady's drawing-room to look, we
had a long quiet chat by the fireside.
In the course of these confidences it became quite plain to me I had
been represented to the wife of the high dignitary, and goodness knows to
how many more people besides, as an exceptional and gifted creature-- a
piece of good fortune for the Company--a man you don't get hold of every
day. Good heavens! and I was going to take charge of a
two-penny-half-penny river-steamboat with a penny whistle attached! It
appeared, however, I was also one of the Workers, with a capital-- you know.
Something like an emissary of light, something like a lower sort of
apostle. There had been a lot
of such rot let loose in print and talk just about that time, and the
excellent woman, living right in the rush of all that humbug, got carried
off her feet. She talked about 'weaning those ignorant millions from their
horrid ways,' till, upon my word, she made me quite uncomfortable. I
ventured to hint that the Company was run for profit.
"`You
forget, dear Charlie, that the labourer is worthy of his hire,' she said,
brightly. It's queer how out of
touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has
never been anything like it, and never can be.
It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it
would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded fact we men have
been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start up
and knock the whole thing over.
"After
this I got embraced, told to wear flannel, be sure to write often, and so
on--and I left. In the
street--I don't know why--a queer feeling came to me that I was an imposter.
Odd thing that I, who used to clear out for any part of the world at
twenty-four hours' notice, with less thought than most men give to the
crossing of a street, had a moment--I won't say of hesitation, but of
startled pause, before this commonplace affair.
The best way I can explain it to you is by saying that, for a second
or two, I felt as though, instead of going to the centre of a continent, I
were about to set off for the centre of the earth.
"I
left in a French steamer, and she called in every blamed port they have out
there, for, as far as I could see, the sole purpose of landing soldiers and
custom-house officers. I watched the coast.
Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an
enigma. There it is before
you-- smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and
always mute with an air of whispering, `Come and find out.' This one was
almost featureless, as if still in the making, with an aspect of monotonous
grimness. The edge of a
colossal jungle, so dark-green as to be almost black, fringed with white
surf, ran straight, like a ruled line, far, far away along a blue sea whose
glitter was blurred by a creeping mist. The sun was fierce, the land seemed
to glisten and drip with steam. Here and there greyish-whitish specks showed
up clustered inside the white surf, with a flag flying above them perhaps.
Settlements some centuries old, and still no bigger than pinheads on the
untouched expanse of their background. We pounded along, stopped, landed
soldiers; went on, landed custom-house clerks to levy toll in what looked
like a God-forsaken wilderness, with a tin shed and a flag-pole lost in it;
landed more soldiers--to take care of the custom-house clerks, presumably.
Some, I heard, got drowned in the surf; but whether they did or not,
nobody seemed particularly to care. They were just flung out there, and on
we went. Every day the coast looked the same, as though we had not moved;
but we passed various places--trading places--with names like Gran' Bassam,
Little Popo; names that seemed to belong to some sordid farce acted in front
of a sinister back-cloth. The idleness of a passenger, my isolation amongst
all these men with whom I had no point of contact, the oily and languid sea,
the uniform sombreness of the coast, seemed to keep me away from the truth
of things, within the toil of a mournful and senseless delusion.
The voice of the surf heard now and then was a positive pleasure,
like the speech of a brother. It was something natural, that had its reason,
that had a meaning. Now and then a boat from the shore gave one a momentary
contact with reality. It was
paddled by black fellows. You could see from afar the white of their
eyeballs glistening. They shouted, sang; their bodies streamed with
perspiration; they had faces like grotesque masks--these chaps; but they had
bone, muscle, a wild vitality, an intense energy of movement, that was as
natural and true as the surf along their coast. They wanted no excuse for
being there. They were a great
comfort to look at. For a time
I would feel I belonged still to a world of straightforward facts; but the
feeling would not last long. Something would turn up to scare it away. Once, I remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the
coast. There wasn't even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It
appears the French had one of their wars going on thereabouts. Her ensign
dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long six-inch guns stuck out all
over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily and let her
down, swaying her thin masts. In
the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was,
incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the six-inch
guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would
disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech--and nothing
happened. Nothing could happen. There
was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in
the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me
earnestly there was a camp of natives--he called them enemies!-- hidden out
of sight somewhere.
"We
gave her her letters (I heard the men in that lonely ship were dying of
fever at the rate of three a day) and went on. We called at some more places
with farcical names, where the merry dance of death and trade goes on in a
still and earthy atmosphere as of an overheated catacomb; all along the
formless coast bordered by dangerous surf, as if Nature herself had tried to
ward off intruders; in and out of rivers, streams of death in life, whose
banks were rotting into mud, whose waters, thickened into slime, invaded the
contorted mangroves, that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of an
impotent despair. Nowhere did we stop long enough to get a particularized
impression, but the general sense of vague and oppressive wonder grew upon
me. It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares.
"It
was upward of thirty days before I saw the mouth of the big river.
We anchored off the seat of the government. But my work would not
begin till some two hundred miles farther on. So as soon as I could I made a
start for a place thirty miles higher up.
"I
had my passage on a little sea-going steamer. Her captain was a Swede, and
knowing me for a seaman, invited me on the bridge. He was a young man, lean, fair, and morose, with lanky hair
and a shuffling gait. As we
left the miserable little wharf, he tossed his head contemptuously at the
shore. `Been living there?' he asked. I
said, `Yes.' `Fine lot these government chaps--are they not?' he went on,
speaking English with great precision and considerable bitterness. `It is
funny what some people will do for a few francs a month. I wonder what
becomes of that kind when it goes upcountry?' I said to him I expected to
see that soon. `So-o-o!' he exclaimed.
He shuffled athwart, keeping one eye ahead vigilantly.
`Don't be too sure,' he continued. `The other day I took up a man who
hanged himself on the road. He was a Swede, too.'
`Hanged himself! Why, in
God's name?' I cried. He kept
on looking out watchfully. `Who
knows? The sun too much for him, or the country perhaps.'
"At
last we opened a reach. A rocky
cliff appeared, mounds of turned-up earth by the shore, houses on a hill,
others with iron roofs, amongst a waste of excavations, or hanging to the
declivity. A continuous noise
of the rapids above hovered over this scene of inhabited devastation. A lot
of people, mostly black and naked, moved about like ants. A jetty projected
into the river. A blinding
sunlight drowned all this at times in a sudden recrudescence of glare.
`There's your Company's station,' said the Swede, pointing to three wooden
barrack-like structures on the rocky slope.
`I will send your things up. Four
boxes did you say? So.
Farewell.'
"I
came upon a boiler wallowing in the grass, then found a path leading up the
hill. It turned aside for the
boulders, and also for an undersized railway-truck lying there on its back
with its wheels in the air. One was off.
The thing looked as dead as the carcass of some animal. I came upon
more pieces of decaying machinery, a stack of rusty rails. To the left a
clump of trees made a shady spot, where dark things seemed to stir feebly. I blinked, the path was steep.
A horn tooted to the right, and I saw the black people run.
A heavy and dull detonation shook the ground, a puff of smoke came
out of the cliff, and that was all. No change appeared on the face of the
rock. They were building a
railway. The cliff was not in the way or anything; but this objectless
blasting was all the work going on.
"A
slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men advanced in a
file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow, balancing small
baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with their
footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends
behind waggled to and fro like tails. I
could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope;
each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a
chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking. Another report
from the cliff made me think suddenly of that ship of war I had seen firing
into a continent. It was the same kind of ominous voice; but these men could
by no stretch of imagination be called enemies.
They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting
shells, had come to them, an insoluble mystery from the sea. All their
meagre breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the
eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me within six inches, without a
glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages.
Behind this raw matter one of the reclaimed, the product of the new forces
at work, strolled despondently, carrying a rifle by its middle.
He had a uniform jacket with one button off, and seeing a white man
on the path, hoisted his weapon to his shoulder with alacrity. This was simple prudence, white men being so much alike at a
distance that he could not tell who I might be. He was speedily reassured, and with a large, white, rascally
grin, and a glance at his charge, seemed to take me into partnership in his
exalted trust. After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high
and just proceedings.
"Instead
of going up, I turned and descended to the left. My idea was to let that
chain-gang get out of sight before I climbed the hill.
You know I am not particularly tender; I've had to strike and to fend
off. I've had to resist and to
attack sometimes--that's only one way of resisting-- without counting the
exact cost, according to the demands of such sort of life as I had blundered
into. I've seen the devil of
violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all
the stars! these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove
men--men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the
blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby,
pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly. How insidious
he could be, too, I was only to find out several months later and a thousand
miles farther. For a moment I stood appalled, as though by a warning.
Finally I descended the hill, obliquely, towards the trees I had seen.
"I
avoided a vast artificial hole somebody had been digging on the slope, the
purpose of which I found it impossible to divine. It wasn't a quarry or a
sandpit, anyhow. It was just a
hole. It might have been connected with the philanthropic desire of giving
the criminals something to do. I
don't know. Then I nearly fell into a very narrow ravine, almost no more
than a scar in the hillside. I
discovered that a lot of imported drainage-pipes for the settlement had been
tumbled in there. There wasn't
one that was not broken. It was a wanton smash-up. At last I got under the
trees. My purpose was to stroll into the shade for a moment; but no sooner
within than it seemed to me I had stepped into the gloomy circle of some
Inferno. The rapids were near,
and an uninterrupted, uniform, headlong, rushing noise filled the mournful
stillness of the grove, where not a breath stirred, not a leaf moved, with a
mysterious sound--as though the tearing pace of the launched earth had
suddenly become audible.
"Black
shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees leaning against the trunks,
clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within the dim light,
in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair. Another mine on the
cliff went off, followed by a slight shudder of the soil under my feet.
The work was going on. The
work! And this was the place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die.
"They
were dying slowly--it was very clear. They
were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now--
nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the
greenish gloom. Brought from
all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in
uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became
inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest. These moribund
shapes were free as air--and nearly as thin. I began to distinguish the
gleam of the eyes under the trees. Then, glancing down, I saw a face near my
hand. The black bones reclined
at full length with one shoulder against the tree, and slowly the eyelids
rose and the sunken eyes looked up at me, enormous and vacant, a kind of
blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs, which died out slowly.
The man seemed young-- almost a boy--but you know with them it's hard
to tell. I found nothing else to do but to offer him one of my good Swede's
ship's biscuits I had in my pocket. The
fingers closed slowly on it and held--there was no other movement and no
other glance. He had tied a bit of white worsted round his neck--Why? Where
did he get it? Was it a
badge--an ornament--a charm-- a propitiatory act?
Was there any idea at all connected with it? It looked startling
round his black neck, this bit of white thread from beyond the seas.
"Near
the same tree two more bundles of acute angles sat with their legs drawn up.
One, with his chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing, in an
intolerable and appalling manner: his brother phantom rested its forehead,
as if overcome with a great weariness; and all about others were scattered
in every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture of a massacre or a
pestilence. While I stood horror-struck, one of these creatures rose to his
hands and knees, and went off on all-fours towards the river to drink. He
lapped out of his hand, then sat up in the sunlight, crossing his shins in
front of him, and after a time let his woolly head fall on his breastbone.
"I
didn't want any more loitering in the shade, and I made haste towards the
station. When near the
buildings I met a white man, in such an unexpected elegance of get-up that
in the first moment I took him for a sort of vision. I saw a high starched
collar, white cuffs, a light alpaca jacket, snowy trousers, a clean necktie,
and varnished boots. No hat.
Hair parted, brushed, oiled, under a green-lined parasol held in a big white
hand. He was amazing, and had a
penholder behind his ear.
"I
shook hands with this miracle, and I learned he was the Company's chief
accountant, and that all the book-keeping was done at this station. He had
come out for a moment, he said, `to get a breath of fresh air. The
expression sounded wonderfully odd, with its suggestion of sedentary
desk-life. I wouldn't have mentioned the fellow to you at all, only it was
from his lips that I first heard the name of the man who is so indissolubly
connected with the memories of that time.
Moreover, I respected the fellow. Yes; I respected his collars, his
vast cuffs, his brushed hair. His appearance was certainly that of a
hairdresser's dummy; but in the great demoralization of the land he kept up
his appearance. That's backbone. His starched collars and got-up shirt-fronts
were achievements of character. He had been out nearly three years; and,
later, I could not help asking him how he managed to sport such linen.
He had just the faintest blush, and said modestly, `I've been
teaching one of the native women about the station.
It was difficult. She had a distaste for the work.' Thus this man had verily
accomplished something. And he
was devoted to his books, which were in apple-pie order.
"Everything
else in the station was in a muddle--heads, things, buildings. Strings of
dusty niggers with splay feet arrived and departed; a stream of manufactured
goods, rubbishy cottons, beads, and brass-wire set into the depths of
darkness, and in return came a precious trickle of ivory.
"I
had to wait in the station for ten days--an eternity. I lived in a hut in
the yard, but to be out of the chaos I would sometimes get into the
accountant's office. It was built of horizontal planks, and so badly put
together that, as he bent over his high desk, he was barred from neck to
heels with narrow strips of sunlight. There
was no need to open the big shutter to see.
It was hot there, too; big flies buzzed fiendishly, and did not
sting, but stabbed. I sat generally on the floor, while, of faultless
appearance (and even slightly scented), perching on a high stool, he wrote,
he wrote. Sometimes he stood up
for exercise. When a truckle-bed with a sick man (some invalid agent from
upcountry) was put in there, he exhibited a gentle annoyance. `The groans of
this sick person,' he said, `distract my attention. And without that it is
extremely difficult to guard against clerical errors in this climate.'
"One
day he remarked, without lifting his head, `In the interior you will no
doubt meet Mr. Kurtz.' On my asking who Mr. Kurtz was, he said he was a
first-class agent; and seeing my disappointment at this information, he
added slowly, laying down his pen, `He is a very remarkable person.' Further
questions elicited from him that Mr. Kurtz was at present in charge of a
trading-post, a very important one, in the true ivory-country, at `the very
bottom of there. Sends in as much ivory as all the others put together . .
.' He began to write again. The
sick man was too ill to groan. The flies buzzed in a great peace.
"Suddenly
there was a growing murmur of voices and a great tramping of feet.
A caravan had come in. A
violent babble of uncouth sounds burst out on the other side of the planks.
All the carriers were speaking together, and in the midst of the uproar the
lamentable voice of the chief agent was heard `giving it up' tearfully for
the twentieth time that day. . . . He rose slowly.
`What a frightful row,' he said. He crossed the room gently to look
at the sick man, and returning, said to me, `He does not hear.'
`What! Dead?' I asked, startled.
`No, not yet,' he answered, with great composure. Then, alluding with
a toss of the head to the tumult in the station-yard, `When one has got to
make correct entries, one comes to hate those savages--hate them to the
death.' He remained thoughtful for a moment.
`When you see Mr. Kurtz' he went on, `tell him from me that
everything here'-- he glanced at the deck--' is very satisfactory.
I don't like to write to him--with those messengers of ours you never
know who may get hold of your letter--at that Central Station.' He stared at
me for a moment with his mild, bulging eyes. `Oh, he will go far, very far,'
he began again. `He will be a somebody in the Administration before long.
They, above--the Council in Europe, you know--mean him to be.'
"He
turned to his work. The noise
outside had ceased, and presently in going out I stopped at the door. In the
steady buzz of flies the homeward-bound agent was lying finished and
insensible; the other, bent over his books, was making correct entries of
perfectly correct transactions; and fifty feet below the doorstep I could
see the still tree-tops of the grove of death.
"Next
day I left that station at last, with a caravan of sixty men, for a
two-hundred-mile tramp.
"No
use telling you much about that. Paths,
paths, everywhere; a stamped-in network of paths spreading over the empty
land, through the long grass, through burnt grass, through thickets, down
and up chilly ravines, up and down stony hills ablaze with heat; and a
solitude, a solitude, nobody, not a hut. The population had cleared out a
long time ago. Well, if a lot
of mysterious niggers armed with all kinds of fearful weapons suddenly took
to travelling on the road between Deal and Gravesend, catching the yokels
right and left to carry heavy loads for them, I fancy every farm and cottage
thereabouts would get empty very soon.
Only here the dwellings were gone, too. Still I passed through
several abandoned villages. There's something pathetically childish in the
ruins of grass walls. Day after day, with the stamp and shuffle of sixty
pair of bare feet behind me, each pair under a 60-lb. load. Camp, cook,
sleep, strike camp, march. Now and then a carrier dead in harness, at rest in the long
grass near the path, with an empty water-gourd and his long staff lying by
his side. A great silence around and above.
Perhaps on some quiet night the tremor of far-off drums, sinking,
swelling, a tremor vast, faint; a sound weird, appealing, suggestive, and
wild--and perhaps with as profound a meaning as the sound of bells in a
Christian country. Once a white man in an unbuttoned uniform, camping on the
path with an armed escort of lank Zanzibaris, very hospitable and festive--
not to say drunk. Was looking
after the upkeep of the road, he declared.
Can't say I saw any road or any upkeep, unless the body of a
middle-aged negro, with a bullet-hole in the forehead, upon which I
absolutely stumbled three miles farther on, may be considered as a permanent
improvement. I had a white companion, too, not a bad chap, but rather too
fleshy and with the exasperating habit of fainting on the hot hillsides,
miles away from the least bit of shade and water.
Annoying, you know, to hold your own coat like a parasol over a man's
head while he is coming to. I couldn't help asking him once what he meant by
coming there at all. `To make
money, of course. What do you
think?' he said, scornfully. Then
he got fever, and had to be carried in a hammock slung under a pole.
As he weighed sixteen stone I had no end of rows with the carriers.
They jibbed, ran away, sneaked off with their loads in the
night--quite a mutiny. So, one evening, I made a speech in English with
gestures, not one of which was lost to the sixty pairs of eyes before me,
and the next morning I started the hammock off in front all right. An hour
afterwards I came upon the whole concern wrecked in a bush--man, hammock,
groans, blankets, horrors. The
heavy pole had skinned his poor nose. He
was very anxious for me to kill somebody, but there wasn't the shadow of a
carrier near. I remembered the old doctor--'It would be interesting for
science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot.' I felt I
was becoming scientifically interesting.
However, all that is to no purpose.
On the fifteenth day I came in sight of the big river again, and
hobbled into the Central Station. It was on a back water surrounded by scrub
and forest, with a pretty border of smelly mud on one side, and on the three
others enclosed by a crazy fence of rushes.
A neglected gap was all the gate it had, and the first glance at the
place was enough to let you see the flabby devil was running that show.
White men with long staves in their hands appeared languidly from amongst
the buildings, strolling up to take a look at me, and then retired out of
sight somewhere. One of them, a
stout, excitable chap with black moustaches, informed me with great
volubility and many digressions, as soon as I told him who I was, that my
steamer was at the bottom of the river. I was thunderstruck.
What, how, why? Oh, it
was `all right.' The `manager himself' was there.
All quite correct. `Everybody had behaved splendidly!
splendidly!'--'you must,' he said in agitation, `go and see the general
manager at once. He is waiting!'
"I
did not see the real significance of that wreck at once. I fancy I see it
now, but I am not sure--not at all. Certainly the affair was too
stupid--when I think of it-- to be altogether natural.
Still . . . But at the moment it presented itself simply as a
confounded nuisance. The
steamer was sunk. They had started two days before in a sudden hurry up the
river with the manager on board, in charge of some volunteer skipper, and
before they had been out three hours they tore the bottom out of her on
stones, and she sank near the south bank. I asked myself what I was to do
there, now my boat was lost. As a matter of fact, I had plenty to do in
fishing my command out of the river. I
had to set about it the very next day. That, and the repairs when I brought
the pieces to the station, took some months.
"My
first interview with the manager was curious.
He did not ask me to sit down after my twenty-mile walk that morning.
He was commonplace in complexion, in features, in manners, and in voice.
He was of middle size and of ordinary build. His eyes, of the usual
blue, were perhaps remarkably cold, and he certainly could make his glance
fall on one as trenchant and heavy as an axe.
But even at these times the rest of his person seemed to disclaim the
intention. Otherwise there was
only an indefinable, faint expression of his lips, something stealthy-- a
smile--not a smile--I remember it, but I can't explain. It was unconscious,
this smile was, though just after he had said something it got intensified
for an instant. It came at the end of his speeches like a seal applied on
the words to make the meaning of the commonest phrase appear absolutely
inscrutable. He was a common
trader, from his youth up employed in these parts--nothing more.
He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even
respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was it! Uneasiness.
Not a definite mistrust--just uneasiness--nothing more.
You have no idea how effective such a . . . a. . . . faculty can be. He had no genius for organizing, for
initiative, or for order even. That was evident in such things as the
deplorable state of the station. He
had no learning, and no intelligence. His position had come to him--why?
Perhaps because he was never ill . . . He had served three terms of
three years out there . . . Because triumphant health in the general rout of
constitutions is a kind of power in itself.
When he went home on leave he rioted on a large scale--pompously.
Jack ashore--with a difference-- in externals only.
This one could gather from his casual talk. He originated nothing, he
could keep the routine going--that's all. But he was great.
He was great by this little thing that it was impossible to tell what
could control such a man. He never gave that secret away.
Perhaps there was nothing within him.
Such a suspicion made one pause--for out there there were no external
checks. Once when various tropical diseases had laid low almost every
`agent' in the station, he was heard to say, `Men who come out here should
have no entrails.' He sealed the utterance with that smile of his, as though
it had been a door opening into a darkness he had in his keeping. You
fancied you had seen things--but the seal was on. When annoyed at meal-times
by the constant quarrels of the white men about precedence, he ordered an
immense round table to be made, for which a special house had to be built.
This was the station's mess-room. Where he sat was the first place--the rest
were nowhere. One felt this to
be his unalterable conviction. He
was neither civil nor uncivil. He was quiet.
He allowed his `boy'--an overfed young negro from the coast--to treat
the white men, under his very eyes, with provoking insolence.
"He
began to speak as soon as he saw me. I
had been very long on the road. He
could not wait. Had to start
without me. The up-river stations had to be relieved.
There had been so many delays already that he did not know who was
dead and who was alive, and how they got on--and so on, and so on.
He paid no attention to my explanations, and, playing with a stick of
sealing-wax, repeated several times that the situation was `very grave, very
grave.' There were rumours that a very important station was in jeopardy,
and its chief, Mr. Kurtz, was ill. Hoped
it was not true. Mr. Kurtz was . . . I felt weary and irritable.
Hang Kurtz, I thought. I interrupted him by saying I had heard of Mr.
Kurtz on the coast. `Ah! So they talk of him down there,' he murmured to
himself. Then he began again, assuring me Mr. Kurtz was the best agent he
had, an exceptional man, of the greatest importance to the Company;
therefore I could understand his anxiety.
He was, he said, `very, very uneasy.'
Certainly he fidgeted on his chair a good deal, exclaimed, `Ah, Mr.
Kurtz!' broke the stick of sealing-wax and seemed dumfounded by the
accident. Next thing he wanted
to know `how long it would take to' . . . I interrupted him again. Being
hungry, you know, and kept on my feet too. I was getting savage. `How can I tell?' I said. `I
haven't even seen the wreck yet-- some months, no doubt.'
All this talk seemed to me so futile. `Some months,' he said.
`Well, let us say three months before we can make a start.
Yes. That ought to do
the affair.' I flung out of his
hut (he lived all alone in a clay hut with a sort of verandah) muttering to
myself my opinion of him. He
was a chattering idiot. Afterwards I took it back when it was borne in upon
me startlingly with what extreme nicety he had estimated the time requisite
for the `affair.'
"I
went to work the next day, turning, so to speak, my back on that station.
In that way only it seemed to me I could keep my hold on the
redeeming facts of life. Still,
one must look about sometimes; and then I saw this station, these men
strolling aimlessly about in the sunshine of the yard. I asked myself
sometimes what it all meant. They
wandered here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands, like a
lot of faithless pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten fence. The word `ivory'
rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were
praying to it. A taint of
imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse. By
Jove! I've never seen anything
so unreal in my life. And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this
cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like
evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic
invasion.
"Oh,
these months! Well, never mind.
Various things yhappened. One evening a grass shed full of calico,
cotton prints, beads, and I don't know what else, burst into a blaze so
suddenly that you would have thought the earth had opened to let an avenging
fire consume all that trash. I was smoking my pipe quietly by my dismantled
steamer, and saw them all cutting capers in the light, with their arms
lifted high, when the stout man with moustaches came tearing down to the
river, a tin pail in his hand, assured me that everybody was `behaving
splendidly, splendidly,' dipped about a quart of water and tore back again.
I noticed there was a hole in the bottom of his pail.
"I
strolled up. There was no
hurry. You see the thing had
gone off like a box of matches. It
had been hopeless from the very first. The flame had leaped high, driven
everybody back, lighted up everything-- and collapsed.
The shed was already a heap of embers glowing fiercely. A nigger was
being beaten near by. They said
he had caused the fire in some way; be that as it may, he was screeching
most horribly. I saw him, later, for several days, sitting in a bit of shade
looking very sick and trying to recover himself; afterwards he arose and
went out-- and the wilderness without a sound took him into its bosom again.
As I approached the glow from the dark I found myself at the back of two
men, talking. I heard the name
of Kurtz pronounced, then the words, `take advantage of this unfortunate
accident.' One of the men was
the manager. I wished him a good evening. `Did you ever see anything like it-- eh? it is incredible,'
he said, and walked off. The
other man remained. He was a first-class agent, young, gentlemanly, a bit
reserved, with a forked little beard and a hooked nose.
He was stand-offish with the other agents, and they on their side
said he was the manager's spy upon them.
As to me, I had hardly ever spoken to him before. We got into talk,
and by and by we strolled away from the hissing ruins. Then he asked me to
his room, which was in the main building of the station. He struck a match,
and I perceived that this young aristocrat had not only a silver-mounted
dressing-case but also a whole candle all to himself. Just at that time the
manager was the only man supposed to have any right to candles.
Native mats covered the clay walls; a collection of spears, assegais,
shields, knives was hung up in trophies. The business intrusted to this
fellow was the making of bricks-- so I had been informed; but there wasn't a
fragment of a brick anywhere in the station, and he had been there more than
a year--waiting. It seems he
could not make bricks without something, I don't know what--straw maybe.
Anyway, it could not be found there and as it was not likely to be sent from
Europe, it did not appear clear to me what he was waiting for. An act of
special creation perhaps. However,
they were all waiting-- all the sixteen or twenty pilgrims of them--for
something; and upon my word it did not seem an uncongenial occupation, from
the way they took it, though the only thing that ever came to them was
disease-- as far as I could see. They
beguiled the time by back-biting and intriguing against each other in a
foolish kind of way. There was
an air of plotting about that station, but nothing came of it, of course. It
was as unreal as everything else--as the philanthropic pretence of the whole
concern, as their talk, as their government, as their show of work. The only
real feeling was a desire to get appointed to a trading-post where ivory was
to be had, so that they could earn percentages. They intrigued and slandered
and hated each other only on that account-- but as to effectually lifting a
little finger--oh, no. By
heavens! there is something after all in the world allowing one man to steal
a horse while another must not look at a halter.
Steal a horse straight out. Very well.
He has done it. Perhaps
he can ride. But there is a way
of looking at a halter that would provoke the most charitable of saints into
a kick.
"I
had no idea why he wanted to be sociable, but as we chatted in there it
suddenly occurred to me the fellow was trying to get at something-- in fact,
pumping me. He alluded
constantly to Europe, to the people I was supposed to know there--putting
leading questions as to my acquaintances in the sepulchral city, and so on.
His little eyes glittered like mica discs-- with curiosity--though he
tried to keep up a bit of superciliousness. At first I was astonished, but
very soon I became awfully curious to see what he would find out from me.
I couldn't possibly imagine what I had in me to make it worth his
while. It was very pretty to see how he baffled himself, for in
truth my body was full only of chills, and my head had nothing in it but
that wretched steamboat business. It was evident he took me for a perfectly
shameless prevaricator. At last he got angry, and, to conceal a movement of
furious annoyance, he yawned. I
rose. Then I noticed a small
sketch in oils, on a panel, representing a woman, draped and blindfolded,
carrying a lighted torch. The background was sombre--almost black.
The movement of the woman was stately, and the effect of the
torchlight on the face was sinister.
"It
arrested me, and he stood by civilly, holding an empty half-pint champagne
bottle (medical comforts) with the candle stuck in it. To my question he
said Mr. Kurtz had painted this--in this very station more than a year
ago--while waiting for means to go to his trading post. `Tell me, pray,'
said I, `who is this Mr. Kurtz?'
"`The
chief of the Inner Station,' he answered in a short tone, looking away.
`Much obliged,' I said, laughing. `And you are the brickmaker of the
Central Station. Every one knows that.'
He was silent for a while. `He is a prodigy,' he said at last.
`He is an emissary of pity and science and progress, and devil knows
what else. We want,' he began
to declaim suddenly, `for the guidance of the cause intrusted to us by
Europe, so to speak, higher intelligence, wide sympathies, a singleness of
purpose.' `Who says that?' I
asked. `Lots of them,' he
replied. `Some even write that;
and so HE comes here, a special being, as you ought to know.' `Why ought I
to know?' I interrupted, really
surprised. He paid no attention. `Yes.
Today he is chief of the best station, next year he will be
assistant-manager, two years more and . . . but I dare-say you know what he
will be in two years' time. You are of the new gang--the gang of virtue.
The same people who sent him specially also recommended you. Oh, don't say no. I've my own eyes to trust.'
Light dawned upon me. My
dear aunt's influential acquaintances were producing an unexpected effect
upon that young man. I nearly burst into a laugh. `Do you read the Company's
confidential correspondence?' I asked.
He hadn't a word to say. It
was great fun. `When Mr. Kurtz,' I continued, severely, `is General Manager,
you won't have the opportunity.'
"He
blew the candle out suddenly, and we went outside. The moon had risen.
Black figures strolled about listlessly, pouring water on the glow,
whence proceeded a sound of hissing; steam ascended in the moonlight, the
beaten nigger groaned somewhere. `What a row the brute makes!' said the
indefatigable man with the moustaches, appearing near us.
`Serve him right. Transgression--punishment--bang!
Pitiless, pitiless. That's the only way. This will prevent all conflagrations for the future.
I was just telling the manager . . .' He noticed my companion, and
became crestfallen all at once. `Not in bed yet,' he said, with a kind of
servile heartiness; `it's so natural. Ha!
Danger--agitation.' He
vanished. I went on to the riverside, and the other followed me. I heard a
scathing murmur at my ear, `Heap of muffs--go to.' The pilgrims could be
seen in knots gesticulating, discussing. Several had still their staves in
their hands. I verily believe
they took these sticks to bed with them.
Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and
through that dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable
courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one's very heart--its
mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life. The hurt
nigger moaned feebly somewhere near by, and then fetched a deep sigh that
made me mend my pace away from there. I felt a hand introducing itself under
my arm. `My dear sir,' said the
fellow, `I don't want to be misunderstood, and especially by you, who will
see Mr. Kurtz long before I can have that pleasure. I wouldn't like him to
get a false idea of my disposition. . . .'
"I
let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that
if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing
inside but a little loose dirt, maybe. He, don't you see, had been planning
to be assistant-manager by and by under the present man, and I could see
that the coming of that Kurtz had upset them both not a little. He talked
precipitately, and I did not try to stop him. I had my shoulders against the
wreck of my steamer, hauled up on the slope like a carcass of some big river
animal. The smell of mud, of primeval mud, by Jove! was in my nostrils, the
high stillness of primeval forest was before my eyes; there were shiny
patches on the black creek. The moon had spread over everything a thin layer
of silver-- over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted
vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I
could see through a sombre gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly
by without a murmur. All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man
jabbered about himself. I
wondered whether the stillness on the face of the immensity looking at us
two were meant as an appeal or as a menace.
What were we who had strayed in here? Could we handle that dumb
thing, or would it handle us? I felt how big, how confoundedly big, was that
thing that couldn't talk, and perhaps was deaf as well.
What was in there? I could see a little ivory coming out from there,
and I had heard Mr. Kurtz was in there.
I had heard enough about it, too-- God knows!
Yet somehow it didn't bring any image with it-- no more than if I had
been told an angel or a fiend was in there. I believed it in the same way
one of you might believe there are inhabitants in the planet Mars.
I knew once a Scotch sailmaker who was certain, dead sure, there were
people in Mars. If you asked him for some idea how they looked and behaved,
he would get shy and mutter something about `walking on all-fours.' If you
as much as smiled, he would--though a man of sixty-- offer to fight you. I would not have gone so far as to fight for Kurtz, but I
went for him near enough to a lie. You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a
lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it
appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies--
which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world-- what I want to
forget. It makes me miserable
and sick, like biting something rotten would do.
Temperament, I suppose. Well, I went near enough to it by letting the
young fool there believe anything he liked to imagine as to my influence in
Europe. I became in an instant as much of a pretence as the rest of the
bewitched pilgrims. This simply
because I had a notion it somehow would be of help to that Kurtz whom at the
time I did not see--you understand. He
was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you
do. Do you see him? Do you see
the story? Do you see anything?
It seems to me I am trying to tell you ya dream--making a vain
attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that
commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of
struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is
of the very essence of dreams. . . ."
He
was silent for a while.
".
. . No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of
any given epoch of one's existence--that which makes its truth, its
meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence.
It is impossible. We live, as we dream--alone.
. . ."
He
paused again as if reflecting, then added:
"Of
course in this you fellows see more than I could then. You see me, whom you
know. . . ."
It
had become so pitch dark that we listeners could hardly see one another.
For a long time already he, sitting apart, had been no more to us
than a voice. There was not a
word from anybody. The others might have been asleep, but I was awake. I
listened, I listened on the watch for the sentence, for the word, that would
give me the clue to the faint uneasiness inspired by this narrative that
seemed to shape itself without human lips in the heavy night-air of the
river.
".
. . Yes--I let him run on," Marlow began again, "and think what he
pleased about the powers that were behind me.
I did! And there was
nothing behind me! There was nothing but that wretched, old, mangled
steamboat I was leaning against, while he talked fluently about `the
necessity for every man to get on.' `And
when one comes out here, you conceive, it is not to gaze at the moon.' Mr.
Kurtz was a `universal genius,' but even a genius would find it easier to
work with `adequate tools--intelligent men.' He did not make bricks--why,
there was a physical impossibility in the way--as I was well aware; and if
he did secretarial work for the manager, it was because `no sensible man
rejects wantonly the confidence of his superiors.'
Did I see it? I saw it. What
more did I want? What I really
wanted was rivets, by heaven! Rivets.
To get on with the work--to stop the hole. Rivets I wanted.
There were cases of them down at the coast-- cases--piled
up--burst--split! You kicked a
loose rivet at every second step in that station-yard on the hillside.
Rivets had rolled into the grove of death.
You could fill your pockets with rivets for the trouble of stooping
down-- and there wasn't one rivet to be found where it was wanted. We had
plates that would do, but nothing to fasten them with. And every week the
messenger, a long negro, letter-bag on shoulder and staff in hand, left our
station for the coast. And several times a week a coast caravan came in with
trade goods--ghastly glazed calico that made you shudder only to look at it,
glass beads value about a penny a quart, confounded spotted cotton
handkerchiefs. And no rivets.
Three carriers could have brought all that was wanted to set that steamboat
afloat.
"He
was becoming confidential now, but I fancy my unresponsive attitude must
have exasperated him at last, for he judged it necessary to inform me he
feared neither God nor devil, let alone any mere man.
I said I could see that very well, but what I wanted was a certain
quantity of rivets--and rivets were what really Mr. Kurtz wanted, if he had
only known it. Now letters went to the coast every week.
. . . `My dear sir,' he cried, `I write from dictation.'
I demanded rivets. There was a way--for an intelligent man.
He changed his manner; became very cold, and suddenly began to talk
about a hippopotamus; wondered whether sleeping on board the steamer (I
stuck to my salvage night and day) I wasn't disturbed. There was an old
hippo that had the bad habit of getting out on the bank and roaming at night
over the station grounds. The pilgrims used to turn out in a body and empty
every rifle they could lay hands on at him.
Some even had sat up o' nights for him. All this energy was wasted,
though. `That animal has a
charmed life,' he said; `but you can say this only of brutes in this
country. No man--you apprehend me?--no man here bears a charmed life.' He
stood there for a moment in the moonlight with his delicate hooked nose set
a little askew, and his mica eyes glittering without a wink, then, with a
curt Good-night, he strode off. I could see he was disturbed and
considerably puzzled, which made me feel more hopeful than I had been for
days. It was a great comfort to turn from that chap to my influential
friend, the battered, twisted, ruined, tin-pot steamboat. I clambered on
board. She rang under my feet
like an empty Huntley & Palmer biscuit-tin kicked along a gutter; she
was nothing so solid in make, and rather less pretty in shape, but I had
expended enough hard work on her to make me love her. No influential friend
would have served me better. She had given me a chance to come out a bit--to
find out what I could do. No, I
don't like work. I had rather
laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don't like
work--no man does--but I like what is in the work-- the chance to find
yourself. Your own reality--for
yourself, not for others--what no other man can ever know. They can only see
the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.
"I
was not surprised to see somebody sitting aft, on the deck, with his legs
dangling over the mud. You see
I rather chummed with the few mechanics there were in that station, whom the
other pilgrims naturally despised--on account of their imperfect manners, I
suppose. This was the foreman--a boiler-maker by trade--a good worker. He
was a lank, bony, yellow-faced man, with big intense eyes. His aspect was
worried, and his head was as bald as the palm of my hand; but his hair in
falling seemed to have stuck to his chin, and had prospered in the new
locality, for his beard hung down to his waist. He was a widower with six
young children (he had left them in charge of a sister of his to come out
there), and the passion of his life was pigeon-flying. He was an enthusiast
and a connoisseur. He would rave about pigeons.
After work hours he used sometimes to come over from his hut for a
talk about his children and his pigeons; at work, when he had to crawl in
the mud under the bottom of the steamboat, he would tie up that beard of his
in a kind of white serviette he brought for the purpose.
It had loops to go over his ears. In the evening he could be seen
squatted on the bank rinsing that wrapper in the creek with great care, then
spreading it solemnly on a bush to dry.
"I
slapped him on the back and shouted, `We shall have rivets!' He scrambled to
his feet exclaiming, `No! Rivets!' as though he couldn't believe his ears.
Then in a low voice, `You . . . eh?' I don't know why we behaved like
lunatics. I put my finger to
the side of my nose and nodded mysteriously.
`Good for you!' he cried, snapped his fingers above his head, lifting
one foot. I tried a jig. We
capered on the iron deck. A
frightful clatter came out of that hulk, and the virgin forest on the other
bank of the creek sent it back in a thundering roll upon the sleeping
station. It must have made some of the pilgrims sit up in their hovels. A
dark figure obscured the lighted doorway of the manager's hut, vanished,
then, a second or so after, the doorway itself vanished, too. We stopped,
and the silence driven away by the stamping of our feet flowed back again
from the recesses of the land. The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant
and entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless
in the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of soundless life, a rolling
wave of plants, piled up, crested, ready to topple over the creek, to sweep
every little man of us out of his little existence. And it moved not.
A deadened burst of mighty splashes and snorts reached us from afar,
as though an icthyosaurus had been taking a bath of glitter in the great
river. `After all,' said the
boiler-maker in a reasonable tone, `why shouldn't we get the rivets?' Why
not, indeed! I did not know of
any reason why we shouldn't. `They'll come in three weeks,' I said
confidently.
"But
they didn't. Instead of rivets there came an invasion, an infliction, a
visitation. It came in sections
during the next three weeks, each section headed by a donkey carrying a
white man in new clothes and tan shoes, bowing from that elevation right and
left to the impressed pilgrims. A quarrelsome band of footsore sulky niggers
trod on the heels of the donkey; a lot of tents, camp-stools, tin boxes,
white cases, brown bales would be shot down in the courtyard, and the air of
mystery would deepen a little over the muddle of the station. Five such
instalments came, with their absurd air of disorderly flight with the loot
of innumerable outfit shops and provision stores, that, one would think,
they were lugging, after a raid, into the wilderness for equitable division.
It was an inextricable mess of things decent in themselves but that human
folly made look like the spoils of thieving.
"This
devoted band called itself the Eldorado Exploring Expedition, and I believe
they were sworn to secrecy. Their talk, however, was the talk of sordid
buccaneers: it ywas reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and
cruel without courage; there was not an atom of foresight or of serious
intention in the whole batch of them, and they did not seem aware these
things are wanted for the work of the world.
To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with
no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking
into a safe. Who paid the expenses of the noble enterprise I don't know; but
the uncle of our manager was leader of that lot.
"In
exterior he resembled a butcher in a poor neighbourhood, and his eyes had a
look of sleepy cunning. He
carried his fat paunch with ostentation on his short legs, and during the
time his gang infested the station spoke to no one but his nephew. You could
see these two roaming about all day long with their heads close together in
an everlasting confab.
"I
had given up worrying myself about the rivets. One's capacity for that kind
of folly is more limited than you would suppose.
I said Hang!--and let things slide. I had plenty of time for
meditation, and now and then I would give some thought to Kurtz. I wasn't very interested in him. No. Still, I was curious to
see whether this man, who had come out equipped with moral ideas of some
sort, would climb to the top after all and how he would set about his work
when there."
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