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<chapter id="chapt03"> <title>III</title>

<paragraph>&ldquo;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 &mdash; why he did not
instantly disappear. &lsquo;I went a little farther,&rsquo; he said,
&lsquo;then still a little farther &mdash; 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 &mdash; quick &mdash; I tell
you.&rsquo; The glamour of youth enveloped his parti-coloured rags,
his destitution, his loneliness, the essential desolation of his
futile wanderings. For months &mdash; for years &mdash; his life
hadn't been worth a day's purchase; and there he was gallantly,
thoughtlessly alive, to all appearance indestructible solely by the
virtue of his few years and of his unreflecting audacity. I was
seduced into something like admiration &mdash; 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 &mdash; the man before your eyes
&mdash; 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.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;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. &lsquo;We talked of everything,&rsquo; he said, quite
transported at the recollection. &lsquo;I forgot there was such a
thing as sleep. The night did not seem to last an hour. Everything!
Everything! &hellip; Of love, too.&rsquo; &lsquo;Ah, he talked to you
of love!&rsquo; I said, much amused. &lsquo;It isn't what you
think,&rsquo; he cried, almost passionately. &lsquo;It was in
general. He made me see things &mdash; things.&rsquo;</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;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.  &lsquo;And, ever since, you have been with him, of
course?&rsquo; I said.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;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. &lsquo;Very often coming to
this station, I had to wait days and days before he would turn
up,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;Ah, it was worth waiting for! &mdash;
sometimes.&rsquo; &lsquo;What was he doing? exploring or what?&rsquo;
I asked. &lsquo;Oh, yes, of course&rsquo;, he had discovered lots of
villages, a lake, too &mdash; he did not know exactly in what
direction; it was dangerous to inquire too much &mdash; but mostly his
expeditions had been for ivory. &lsquo;But he had no goods to trade
with by that time,&rsquo; I objected. &lsquo;There's a good lot of
cartridges left even yet,&rsquo; he answered, looking away. &lsquo;To
speak plainly, he raided the country,&rsquo; I said. He nodded.
&lsquo;Not alone, surely!&rsquo; He muttered something about the
villages round that lake. &lsquo;Kurtz got the tribe to follow him,
did he?&rsquo; I suggested. He fidgeted a little.  &lsquo;They adored
him,&rsquo; 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. &lsquo;What can you
expect?&rsquo; he burst out; &lsquo;he came to them with thunder and
lightning, you know &mdash; and they had never seen anything like it
&mdash; and very terrible. He could be very terrible. You can't judge
Mr. Kurtz as you would an ordinary man. No, no, no! Now &mdash; just
to give you an idea &mdash; I don't mind telling you, he wanted to
shoot me, too, one day &mdash; but I don't judge him.&rsquo;
&lsquo;Shoot you!&rsquo; I cried &lsquo;What for?&rsquo; &lsquo;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 &mdash;
forget himself &mdash; you know.&rsquo; &lsquo;Why! he's mad,&rsquo; 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&hellip; 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 &mdash; as silent and quiet as the
ruined house on the hill &mdash; 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 &mdash; heavy, like the closed door of a prison
&mdash; 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 &mdash; getting himself adored, I
suppose &mdash; 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 &mdash; what shall I say? &mdash; less material
aspirations. However he had got much worse suddenly. &lsquo;I heard he
was lying helpless, and so I came up &mdash; took my chance,&rsquo;
said the Russian. &lsquo;Oh, he is bad, very bad.&rsquo; 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
&mdash; 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 &mdash; and there it was, black, dried, sunken, with dosed
eyelids &mdash; 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.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;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 &mdash; some small matter which, when the pressing need arose,
could not be found under his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of
his deficiency himself I can't say. I think the knowledge came to him
at last &mdash; 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 &mdash; and the whisper
had proved irresistibly fascinating.  It echoed loudly within him
because he was hollow at the core&hellip; 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.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;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 &mdash; say, symbols &mdash; 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 the people surrounded the
place, and the chiefs came every day to see him. They would
crawl&hellip; &lsquo;I don't want to know anything of the ceremonies used
when approaching Mr. Kurtz,&rsquo; I shouted. Curious, this feeling
that came over me that such details would be more intolerable than
those heads drying on the stakes under Mr. Kurtz's windows. After a]l,
that was only a savage sight, while I seemed at one bound to have been
transported into some lightless region of subtle horrors, where pure,
uncomplicated savagery was a positive relief, being something that had
a right to exist &mdash; obviously &mdash; 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 &mdash; 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 &mdash; and these were rebels. Those rebellious heads looked
very subdued to me on their sticks. &lsquo;You don't know how such a
life tries a man like Kurtz,&rsquo; cried Kurtz's last disciple.
&lsquo;Well, and you?&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;I! I! I am a simple man. I
have no great thoughts. I want nothing from anybody.  How can you
compare me to &hellip; ?&rsquo; His feelings were too much for speech,
and suddenly he broke down. &lsquo;I don't understand,&rsquo; he
groaned. &lsquo;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 &mdash; I &mdash; haven't slept for
the last ten nights &hellip;&rsquo;</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;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.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;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 &mdash; of naked human beings
&mdash; 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.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo; &lsquo;Now, if he does not say the right thing to
them we are all done for,&rsquo; 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. &lsquo;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,&rsquo; 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 &mdash; Kurtz &mdash;
that means short in German &mdash; don't it? Well, the name was as
true as everything else in his life &mdash; 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 &mdash;
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.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;Some of the pilgrims behind the stretcher carried
his arms &mdash; two shot-guns, a heavy rifle, and a light
revolver-carbine &mdash; 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 &mdash; 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.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;He rustled one of the letters, and looking straight
in my face said, &lsquo;I am glad.&rsquo; 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 &mdash; factitious no
doubt &mdash; to very nearly make an end of us, as you shall hear
directly.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;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.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;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.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;She walked with measured steps, draped in striped
and fringed clothes, treading the earth proudly, with a slight jingle
and flash of barbarous ornaments. She carried her head high; her hair
was done in the shape of a helmet; she had brass leggings to the knee,
brass wire gauntlets to the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek,
innumerable necklaces of glass beads on her neck; bizarre things,
charms, gifts of witch-men, that hung about her, glittered and
trembled at every step. She must have had the value of several
elephant tusks upon her. She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and
magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate
progress. And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole
sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the
fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her, pensive, as though
it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate
soul.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;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.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;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.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo; &lsquo;If she had offered to come aboard I really
think I would have tried to shoot her,&rsquo; said the man of patches,
nervously. &lsquo;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&hellip; No &mdash; it's too much
for me. Ah, well, it's all over now.&rsquo;</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;At this moment I heard Kurtz's deep voice behind the
curtain: &lsquo;Save me! &mdash; 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 &mdash; I will return. I'll show you
what can be done. You with your little peddling notions &mdash; you
are interfering with me. I will return.  I&hellip;&rsquo;</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;The manager came out. He did me the honour to take
me under the arm and lead me aside. &lsquo;He is very low, very
low,&rsquo; he said. He considered it necessary to sigh, but neglected
to be consistently sorrowful. &lsquo;We have done all we could for him
&mdash; 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 &mdash; 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 &mdash; mostly fossil. We
must save it, at all events &mdash; but look how precarious the
position is &mdash; and why? Because the method is unsound.&rsquo;
&lsquo;Do you,&rsquo; said I, looking at the shore, &lsquo;call it
&ldquo;unsound method?&ldquo; &rsquo; &lsquo;Without doubt,&rsquo; he
exclaimed hotly. &lsquo;Don't you?&rsquo; &hellip; &lsquo;No method at
all,&rsquo; I murmured after a while. &lsquo;Exactly,&rsquo; he
exulted.  &lsquo;I anticipated this. Shows a complete want of
judgment.  It is my duty to point it out in the proper quarter.&rsquo;
&lsquo;Oh,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;that fellow &mdash; what's his name?
&mdash; the brickmaker, will make a readable report for you.&rsquo; 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
&mdash; positively for relief. &lsquo;Nevertheless I think Mr. Kurtz
is a remarkable man,&rsquo; I said with emphasis. He started, dropped
on me a cold heavy glance, said very quietly, &lsquo;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.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;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&hellip; The Russian
tapped me on the shoulder.  I heard him mumbling and stammering
something about &lsquo;brother seaman &mdash; couldn't conceal &mdash;
knowledge of matters that would affect Mr. Kurtz's reputation.&rsquo;
I waited. For him evidently Mr. Kurtz was not in his grave; I suspect
that for him Mr. Kurtz was one of the immortals. &lsquo;Well!&rsquo;
said I at last, &lsquo;speak out. As it happens, I am Mr. Kurtz's
friend &mdash; in a way.&rsquo;</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;He stated with a good deal of formality that had we
not been &lsquo;of the same profession,&rsquo; he would have kept the
matter to himself without regard to consequences.  &lsquo;He suspected
there was an active ill will towards him on the part of these white
men that &mdash;&rsquo; &lsquo;You are right,&rsquo; I said,
remembering a certain conversation I had overheard. &lsquo;The manager
thinks you ought to be hanged.&rsquo; He showed a concern at this
intelligence which amused me at first. &lsquo;I had better get out of
the way quietly,&rsquo; he said earnestly. &lsquo;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.&rsquo;
&lsquo;Well, upon my word,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;perhaps you had
better go if you have any friends amongst the savages near by.&rsquo;
&lsquo;Plenty,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;They are simple people &mdash;
and I want nothing, you know.&rsquo; He stood biting his lip, then:
&lsquo;I didn't want any harm to happen to these whites here, but of
course I was thinking of Mr. Kurtz's reputation &mdash; but you are a
brother seaman and &mdash;&rsquo; &lsquo;All right,&rsquo; said I,
after a time. &lsquo;Mr. Kurtz's reputation is safe with me.&rsquo; I
did not know how truly I spoke.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;He informed me, lowering his voice, that it was
Kurtz who had ordered the attack to be made on the steamer. &lsquo;He
hated sometimes the idea of being taken away &mdash; and then
again&hellip; But I don't understand these matters. I am a simple man. He
thought it would scare you away &mdash; 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.&rsquo; &lsquo;Very well,&rsquo; I said.  &lsquo;He is
all right now.&rsquo; &lsquo;Ye-e-es,&rsquo; he muttered, not very
convinced apparently. &lsquo;Thanks,&rsquo; said I; &lsquo;I shall
keep my eyes open.&rsquo; &lsquo;But quiet &mdash; eh?&rsquo; he urged
anxiously.  &lsquo;It would be awful for his reputation if anybody
here &mdash;&rsquo; I promised a complete discretion with great
gravity. &lsquo;I have a canoe and three black fellows waiting not
very far. I am off. Could you give me a few Martini-Henry
cartridges?&rsquo; I could, and did, with proper secrecy. He helped
himself, with a wink at me, to a handful of my tobacco. &lsquo;Between
sailors &mdash; you know &mdash; good English tobacco.&rsquo; At the
door of the pilot-house he turned round &mdash; &lsquo;I say, haven't
you a pair of shoes you could spare?&rsquo; He raised one leg.
&lsquo;Look&rsquo; 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 &lsquo;Towson's Inquiry,&rsquo; etc., etc. He seemed to think
himself excellently well equipped for a renewed encounter with the
wilderness. &lsquo;Ah! I'll never, never meet such a man again. You
ought to have heard him recite poetry &mdash; his own, too, it was, he
told me. Poetry!&rsquo; He rolled his eyes at the recollection of
these delights. &lsquo;Oh, he enlarged my mind!&rsquo;
&lsquo;Good-bye,&rsquo; said I. He shook hands and vanished in the
night. Sometimes I ask myself whether I had ever really seen him
&mdash; whether it was possible to meet such a phenomenon!  &hellip;
</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;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.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;I think I would have raised an outcry if I had
believed my eyes. But I didn't believe them at first &mdash; 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
&mdash; how shall I define it? &mdash; 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.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;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 &mdash; it was ordered I
should never betray him &mdash; it was written I should be loyal to
the nightmare of my choice. I was anxious to deal with this shadow by
myself alone &mdash; and to this day I don't know why I was so jealous
of sharing with any one the peculiar blackness of that
experience.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;As soon as I got on the bank I saw a trail &mdash; a
broad trail through the grass. I remember the exultation with which I
said to myself, &lsquo;He can't walk &mdash; he is crawling on
all-fours &mdash; I've got him.&rsquo; 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 &mdash; 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.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;I kept to the track though &mdash; 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 &mdash; if indeed I had
seen anything. I was circumventing Kurtz as though it had been a
boyish game.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;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. &lsquo;Go away &mdash; hide yourself,&rsquo; 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
&mdash; antelope horns, I think &mdash; on its head. Some sorcerer,
some witch-man, no doubt: it looked fiendlike enough. &lsquo;Do you
know what you are doing?&rsquo; I whispered. &lsquo;Perfectly,&rsquo;
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.
&lsquo;If he makes a row we are lost,&rsquo; 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 &mdash; this wandering and
tormented thing.  &lsquo;You will be lost,&rsquo; I said &mdash;
&lsquo;utterly lost.&rsquo; 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 &mdash;
to endure &mdash; to endure &mdash; even to the end &mdash; even
beyond.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo; &lsquo;I had immense plans,&rsquo; he muttered
irresolutely.  &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said I; &lsquo;but if you try to
shout I'll smash your head with &mdash;&rsquo; There was not a stick
or a stone near.  &lsquo;I will throttle you for good,&rsquo; I
corrected myself. &lsquo;I was on the threshold of great
things,&rsquo; he pleaded, in a voice of longing, with a wistfulness
of tone that made my blood run cold. &lsquo;And now for this stupid
scoundrel &mdash;&rsquo; &lsquo;Your success in Europe is assured in
any case,&rsquo; I affirmed steadily, I did not want to have the
throttling of him, you understand &mdash; and indeed it would have
been very little use for any practical purpose.  I tried to break the
spell &mdash; the heavy, mute spell of the wilderness &mdash; 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 &mdash; though I had a very lively sense of
that danger, too &mdash; 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 &mdash; himself &mdash; 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 &mdash;
repeating the phrases we pronounced &mdash; but what's the good? They
were common everyday words &mdash; 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 &mdash; 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 &mdash; for my sins, I suppose &mdash; 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 &mdash; 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 &mdash; and he was
not much heavier than a child.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;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 &mdash; something that looked like a
dried gourd; they shouted periodically together strings of amazing
words that resembled no sounds of human language; and the deep murmurs
of the crowd, interrupted suddenly, were like the responses of some
satanic litany.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;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.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo; &lsquo;Do you understand this?&rsquo; I
asked.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;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, appearing
on his colourless lips that a moment after twitched
convulsively. &lsquo;Do I not?&rsquo; he said slowly, gasping, as if
the words had been torn out of him by a supernatural
power.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;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. &lsquo;Don't! don't you frighten them away,&rsquo; 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.</paragraph>

<paragraph>&ldquo;And then that imbecile crowd down on the deck
started their little fun, and I could see nothing more for
smoke.</paragraph>

</chapter>