Heart of Darkness

by Joseph Conrad

and stepped into his shoes. I couldn't let it rest,

  though; but when an opportunity offered at last to

  meet my predecessor, the grass growing through his

  ribs was tall enough to hide his bones. They were all

  there. The supernatural being had not been touched

  after he fell. And the village was deserted, the huts

  gaped black, rotting, all askew within the fallen en-

  dosures. A calamity had come to it, sure enough. The

  people had vanished. Mad terror had scattered them,

  men, women, and children, through the bush, and

  they had never returned. What became of the hens I

  don't know either. I should think the cause of progress

  got them, anyhow. However, through this glorious

  affair I got my appointment, before I had fairly begun

  to hope for it.

  "I flew around like mad to get ready, and before

  forty-eight hours I was crossing the Channel to snow

  myself to my employers, and sign the contract. In a

  very few hours I arrived in a city that always makes

  me think of a whited sepulchre. Prejudice no doubt. I

  had no difficulty in finding the Company's offices. It

  was the biggest thing in the town, and everybody I

  met was full of it. They were going to run an over sea

  empire, and make no end of coin by trade.

  "A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, high

  houses, innumerable windows with venetian blinds, a

  dead silence, grass sprouting between the stones, im-

  posing carriage archways right and left, immense

  double doors standing ponderously ajar. I slipped

  through one of these cracks, went up a swept and un-

  garnished staircase, as arid as a desert, and opened the

  first door I came to. Two women, one fat and the

  other slim, sat on straw-bottomed chairs, knitting black

  wool. The slim one got up and walked straight at me

  -- still knitting with downcast eyes -- and only just as

  I began to think of getting out of her way, as you

  would for a somnambulist, stood still, and looked up.

  Her dress was as plain as an umbrella-cover, and she

  turned round without a word and preceded me into a

  waiting-room. I gave my name, and looked about.

  Deal table in the middle, plain chairs all round the

  walls, on one end a large shining map, marked with

  all the colours of a rainbow. There was a vast amount

  of red -- good to see at any time, because one knows

  that some real work is done in there, a deuce of a lot

  of blue, a little green, smears of orange, and, on

  the East Coast, a purple patch, to show where the

  jolly pioneers of progress drink the jolly lager-beer.

  However, I wasn't going into any of these. I was

  going into the yellow. Dead in the centre. And the

  river was there -- fascinating -- deadly -- like a snake.

  Ough! A door opened, a white-haired secretarial head,

  but wearing a compassionate expression, appeared, and

  a skinny forefinger beckoned me into the sanctuary. Its

  light was dim, and a heavy writing-desk squatted in

  the middle. From behind that structure came out an

  impression of pale plumpness in a frock-coat. The

  great man himself. He was five feet six, I should

  judge, and had his grip on the handle-end of ever so

  many millions. He shook hands, I fancy, murmured

  vaguely, Was satisfied with my French. Bon voyage.

  "In about forty-five seconds I found myself again in

  the waiting-room with the compassionate secretary,

  who, full of desolation and sympathy, made me sign

  some document. I believe I undertook amongst other

  things not to disclose any trade secrets. Well, I am

  not going to.

  "I began to feel slightly uneasy. You know I am

  not used to such ceremonies, and there was something

  ominous in the atmosphere. It was just as though I

  had been let into some conspiracy -- I don't know --

  something not quite right; and I was glad to get out.

  In the outer room the two women knitted black wool

  feverishly. People were arriving, and the younger one

  was walking back and forth introducing them. The

  old one sat on her chair. Her flat cloth slippers were

  propped up on a foot-warmer, and a cat reposed on her

  lap. She wore a starched white affair on her head, had

  a wart on one cheek, and silver-rimmed spectacles hung

  on the tip of her nose. She glanced at me above the

  glasses. The swift and indifferent placidity of that

  look troubled me. Two youths with foolish and cheery

  countenances were being piloted over, and she threw at

  them the same quick glance of unconcerned wisdom.

  She seemed to know all about them and about me, too.

  An eerie feeling came over me. She seemed uncanny

  and fateful. Often far away there I thought of these

  two, guarding the door of Darkness, knitting black

  wool as for a warm pall, one introducing, introducing

  continuously to the unknown, the other scrutinizing

  the cheery and foolish faces with unconcerned old

  eyes. Ave! Old knittter of black wool. Morituri te

  salutant. Not many of those she looked at ever saw

  her again -- not half, by a long way.

  "There was yet a visit to the doctor. 'A simple for-

  mality,' assured me the secretary, with an air of taking

  an immense part in all my sorrows. Accordingly a

  young chap wearing his hat over the left eyebrow,

  some clerk I suppose -- there must have been clerks

  in the business, though the house was as still as a

  house in a city of the dead -- came from somewhere

  up-stairs, and led me forth. He was shabby and care-

  less, with inkstains on the sleeves of his jacket, and

  his cravat was large and billowy, under a chin shaped

  like the toe of an old boot. It was a little too early for

  the doctor, so I proposed a drink, and thereupon he

  developed a vein of joviality. As we sat over our ver-

  mouths he glorified the Company's business, and by

  and by I expressed casually my surprise at him not

  going out there. He became very cool and collected

  all at once. 'I am not such a fool as I look, quoth

  Plato to his disciples,' he said sententiously, emptied

  his glass with great resolution, and we rose.

  "The old doctor felt my pulse, evidently thinking

  of something else the while. 'Good, good for there,' he

  mumbled, and then with a certain eagerness asked me

  whether I would let him measure my head. Rather

  surprised, I said Yes, when he produced a thing like

  calipers and got the dimensions back and front and

  every way, taking notes carefully. He was an un-

  shaven little man in a threadbare coat like a gaberdine,

  with his feet in slippers, and I thought him a harmless

  fool. 'I always ask leave, in the interests of science, to

  measure the crania of those going out there,' he said.

  'And when they come back, too?' I asked. 'Oh, I never

  see them,' he remarked; 'and, moreover, the changes

  take place inside, you know.' He smiled, as if at some

  quiet jok
e. 'So you are going out there. Famous.

  Interesting, too.' He gave me a searching glance, and

  made another note. 'Ever any madness in your fam-

  ily?' he asked, in a matter-of-fact tone. I felt very

  annoyed. 'Is that question in the interests of science,

  too?' 'It would be,' he said, without taking notice of

  my irritation, 'interesting for science to watch the

  mental changes of individuals, on the spot, but . . .'

  'Are you an alienist?' I interrupted. 'Every doctor

  should be -- a little,' answered that original, imperturb-

  ably. 'I have a little theory which you messieurs who

  go out there must help me to prove. This is my share

  in the advantages my country shall reap from the

  possession of such a magnificent dependency. The

  mere wealth I leave to others. Pardon my questions,

  but you are the first Englishman coming under my

  observation . . .' I hastened to assure him I was not

  in the least typical. 'If I were,' said I, 'I wouldn't be

  talking like this with you.' 'What you say is rather

  profound, and probably erroneous,' he said, with a

  laugh. 'Avoid irritation more than exposure to the

  sun. Adieu. How do you English say, eh? Good-bye.

  Ah! Good-bye. Adieu. In the tropics one must before

  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 impostor. Odd thing that I, who used to

  clear out for any part of the world at twenty-four

  hours' notice, with less thought than most men give to

  the crossing of a street, had a moment -- I won't say

  of hesitation, but of startled pause, before this com-

  monplace affair. The best way I can explain it to you

  is by saying that, for a second or two, I felt as though,

  instead of going to the centre of a continent, I were

  about to set off for the centre of the earth.

  "I left in a French steamer, and she called in every

  blamed port they have out there, for, as far as I

  could see, the sole purpose of landing soldiers and

  custom-house officers. I watched the coast. Watching a

  coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an

  enigma. There it is before you -- smiling, frowning,

  inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always

  mute with an air of whispering, 'Come and find out.'

  This one was almost featureless, as if still in the mak-

  ing, with an aspect of monotonous grimness. The edge

  of a colossal jungle, so dark-green as to be almost

  black, fringed with white surf, ran straight, like a

  ruled line, far, far away along a blue sea whose glitter

  was blurred by a creeping mist. The sun was fierce,

  the land seemed to glisten and drip with steam. Here

  and there greyish-whitish specks showed up clustered

  inside the white surf, with a flag fiying above them

  perhaps. Settlements some centuries old, and still no

  bigger than pinheads on the untouched expanse of

  their background. We pounded along, stopped, landed

  soldiers; went on, landed custom-house clerks to

  levy toll in what looked like a God-forsaken wilder-

  ness, with a tin shed and a flag-pole lost in it; landed

  more soldiers to take care of the custom-house clerks,

  presumably. Some, I heard, got drowned in the surf;

  but whether they did or not, nobody seemed particu-

  larly to care. They were just flung out there, and on

  we went. Every day the coast looked the same, as

  though we had not moved; but we passed various

  places -- trading places with names like Gran' Bas-

  sam, Little Popo; names that seemed to belong to

  some sordid farce acted in front of a sinister back-cloth.

  The idleness of a passenger, my isolation amongst all

  these men with whom I had no point of contact, the

  oily and languid sea, the uniform sombreness of the

  coast, seemed to keep me away from the truth of things,

  within the toil of a mournful and senseless delusion.

  The voice of the surf heard now and then was a posi-

  tive pleasure, like the speech of a brother. It was some-

  thing natural, that had its reason, that had a meaning

  Now and then a boat from the shore gave one a mo-

  mentary contact with reality. It was paddled by

  black fellows. You could see from afar the white of

  their eyeballs glistening. They shouted, sang; their

  bodies streamed with perspiration; they had faces

  like grotesque masks -- these chaps; but they had bone,

  muscle, a wild vitality, an intense energy of move-

  ment, that was as natural and true as the surf along

  their coast. They wanted no excuse for being there.

  They were a great comfort to look at. For a time I

  would feel I belonged still to a world of straightfor-

  ward facts; but the feeling would not last long. Some-

  thing would turn up to scare it away. Once, I remem-

  ber, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the

  coast. There wasn't even a shed there, and she was

  shelling the bush. It appears the
French had one of

  their wars going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped

  limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long six-inch guns

  stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell

  swung her up lazily and let her down, swaying her

  thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and

  water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a

  continent. Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a

  small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke

  would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble

  screech -- and nothing happened. Nothing could hap-

  pen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding,

  a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight; and it was

  not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me

  earnestly there was a camp of natives -- he called them

  enemies! -- hidden out of sight somewhere.

  ** "We gave her her 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 im-

  pression, but the general sense of vague and oppres-

  sive 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, speak-

  ing English with great precision and considerable bit-

  terness. 'It is funny what some people will do for a

  few francs a month. I wonder what becomes of that

  kind when it goes upcountry?' I said to him I expected

  to see that soon. 'So-o-o!' he exclaimed. He shuffled

  athwart, keeping one eye ahead vigilantly. 'Don't be

  too sure,' he continued. 'The other day I took up a

  man who hanged himself on the road. He was a

  Swede, too.' 'Hanged himself! Why, in God's name?'

  I cried. He kept on looking out watchfully. 'Who

  knows? The sun too much for him, or the country

  perhaps.'

  "At last we opened a reach. A rocky cliff appeared,

  mounds of turned-up earth by the shore, houses on a

  hill, others with iron roofs, amongst a waste of exca-

  vations, or hanging to the declivity. A continuous noise

  of the rapids above hovered over this scene of in-

  habited devastation. A lot of people, mostly black

  and naked, moved about like ants. A jetty projected

  into the river. A blinding sunlight drowned all this

  at times in a sudden recrudescence of glare. 'There's

  your Company's station,' said the Swede, pointing to

  three wooden barrack-like structures on the rocky

  slope. 'I will send your things up. Four boxes did you

  say? So. Farewell.'

  "I came upon a boiler wallowing in the grass, then

  found a path leading up the hill. It turned aside for

  the boulders, and also for an undersized railway-truck

  lying there on its back with its wheels in the air. One

  was off. The thing looked as dead as the carcass of

  some animal. I came upon more pieces of decaying

  machinery, a stack of rusty rails. To the left a clump

  of trees made a shady spot, where dark things seemed

  to stir feebly. I blinked, the path was steep. A horn

  tooted to the right, and I saw the black people run. A

  heavy and dull detonation shook the ground, a puff

  of smoke came out of the cliff, and that was all. No

  change appeared on the face of the rock. They were

  building a railway. The cliff was not in the way or

  anything; but this objectless blasting was all the work

  going on.

  "A slight clinking behind me made me turn my

  head. Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the