a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force
brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at
you with a vengeful aspect. I got used to it afterwards;
I did not see it any more; I had no time. I had to keep
guessing at the channel; I had to discern, mostly by
inspiration, the signs of hidden banks; I watched for
sunken stones; I was learning to clap my teeth smartly
before my heart flew out, when I shaved by a fluke
some infernal sly old snag that would have ripped the
life out of the tin-pot steamboat and drowned all the
pilgrims; I had to keep a lookout for the signs of
dead wood we could cut up in the night for next day's
steaming. When you have to attend to things of that
sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality --
the reality, I tell you -- fades. The inner truth is hid-
den -- luckily, luckily. But I felt it all the same; I
felt often its mysterious stillness watching me at my
monkey tricks, just as it watches you fellows perform-
ing on your respective tight-ropes for -- what is it?
half-a-crown a tumble --"
"Try to be civil, Marlow," growled a voice, and I
knew there was at least one listener awake besides
myself.
"I beg your pardon. I forgot the heartache which
makes up the rest of the price. And indeed what does
the price matter, if the trick be well done? You do
your tricks very well. And I didn't do badly either,
since I managed not to sink that steamboat on my first
trip. It's a wonder to me yet. Imagine a blindfolded
man set to drive a van over a bad road. I sweated and
shivered over that business considerably, I can tell
you. After all, for a seaman, to scrape the bottom of
the thing that's supposed to float all the time under
his care is the unpardonable sin. No one may know of
it, but you never forget the thump -- eh? A blow on
the very heart. You remember it, you dream of it, you
wake up at night and think of it -- years after -- and go
hot and cold all over. I don't pretend to say that
steamboat floated all the time. More than once she
had to wade for a bit, with twenty cannibals splashing
around and pushing. We had enlisted some of these
chaps on the way for a crew. Fine fellows -- cannibals
-- in their place. They were men one could work with,
and I am grateful to them. And, after all, they did
not eat each other before my face: they had brought
along a provision of hippo-meat which went rotten,
and made the mystery of the wilderness stink in my
nostrils. Phoo! I can sniff it now. I had the manager
on board and three or four pilgrims with their staves
-- all complete. Sometimes we came upon a station
close by the bank, clinging to the skirts of the un-
known, and the white men rushing out of a tumble-
down hovel, with great gestures of joy and surprise
and welcome, seemed very strange -- had the appear-
ance of being held there captive by a spell. The word
ivory would ring in the air for a while -- and on we
went again into the silence, along empty reaches,
round the still bends, between the high walls of our
winding way, reverberating in hollow claps the pon-
derous beat of the stern-wheel. Trees, trees, millions
of trees, massive, immense, running up high; and
at their foot, hugging the bank against the stream,
crept the little begrimed steamboat, like a sluggish
beetle crawling on the floor of a lofty portico. It made
you feel very small, very lost, and yet it was not alto-
gether depressing, that feeling. After all, if you were
small, the grimy beetle crawled on -- which was just
what you wanted it to do. Where the pilgrims im-
agined it crawled to I don't know. To some place
where they expected to get something. I bet! For me
it crawled towards Kurtz -- exclusively; but when the
steam-pipes started leaking we crawled very slow.
The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if
the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to
bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and
deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet
there. At night sometimes the roll of drums behind
the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain
sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air high over
our heads, till the first break of day. Whether it meant
war, peace, or prayer we could not tell. The dawns
were heralded by the descent of a chill stillness; the
wood-cutters slept, their fires burned low; the snap-
ping of a twig would make you start. We were wan-
derers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the
aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fancied
ourselves the first of men taking possession of an ac-
cursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of pro-
found anguish and of excessive toil. But suddenly,
as we struggled round a bend, there would be a
glimpse of rush walls, of peaked grass-roofs, a burst
of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clap-
ping, of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes
rolling, under the droop of heavy and motionless
foliage. The steamer toiled along slowly on the edge
of a black and incomprehensible frenzy. The prehis-
toric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us
-- who could tell? We were cut off from the compre-
hension of our surroundings; we glided past like
phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane
men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a
madhouse. We could not understand because we were
too far and could not remember because we were
travelling in the night of first ages, of those ages that
are gone, leaving hardly a sign -- and no memories.
"The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed
to look upon the shackled form of a conquered mon-
ster, but there -- there you could look at a thing mon-
strous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were
-- No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know,
that was the worst of it -- this suspicion of their not
being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They
howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces;
but what thrilled you was just the thought of their
humanity -- like yours -- the thought of your remote
kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly.
Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough
you would admit to yourself that there was in you just
the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frank-
ness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a
meaning in it which you -- you so remote from the
night of first ages -- could comprehend. And why not?
The mind of man is capable of anything -- because
everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future.
What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion,
valour, rage -- who can tell? -- but truth -- truth
stripped of i
ts cloak of time. Let the fool gape and
shudder -- the man knows, and can look on without a
wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as
these on the shore. He must meet that truth with his
own true stuff -- with his own inborn strength. Princi-
ples won't do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags -- rags
that would fly off at the first good shake. No; you
want a deliberate belief. An appeal to me in this fiend-
ish row -- is there? Very well; I hear; I admit, but I
have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the
speech that cannot be silenced. Of course, a fool, what
with sheer fright and fine sentiments, is always safe.
Who's that grunting? You wonder I didn't go ashore
for a howl and a dance? Well, no -- I didn't. Fine
sentiments, you say? Fine sentiments, be hanged! I
had no time. I had to mess about with white-lead and
strips of woolen blanket helping to put bandages on
those leaky steampipes -- I tell you. I had to watch
the steering, and circumvent those snags, and get the
tin-pot along by hook or by crook. There was surface-
truth enough in these things to save a wiser man. And
between whiles I had to look after the savage who was
fireman. He was an improved specimen; he could fire
up a vertical boiler. He was there below me, and,
upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as
seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather
hat, walking on his hindlegs. A few months of
training had done for that really fine chap. He
squinted at the steam-gauge and at the water-guage
with an evident effort of intrepidity -- and he had
filed teeth, too, the poor devil, and the wool of his
pate shaved into queer patterns, and three orna-
mental scars on each of his cheeks. He ought to have
been clapping his hands and stamping his feet on the
bank, instead of which he was hard at work, a thrall to
strange witchcraft, full of improving knowledge. He
was useful because he had been instructed; and what
he knew was this -- that should the water in that trans-
parent thing disappear, the evil spirit inside the
boiler would get angry through the greatness of his
thirst, and take a terrible vengeance. So he sweated
and watched the glass fearfully (with an impromptu
charm, made of rags, tied to his arm, and a piece of
polished bone, as big as a watch, stuck flatways through
his lower lip), while the wooded banks slipped past
us slowly, the short noise was left behind, the inter-
minable miles of silence -- and we crept on, towards
Kurtz. But the snags were thick, the water was treach-
erous and shallow, the boiler seemed indeed to have
a sulky devil in it, and thus neither that fireman nor
I had any time to peer into our creepy thoughts.
"Some fifty miles below the Inner Station we came
upon a hut of reeds, an inclined and melancholy pole,
with the unrecognizable tatters of what had been a
flag of some sort flying from it, and a neatly stacked
woodpile. This was unexpected. We came to the bank,
and on the stack of firewood found a flat piece of
board with some faded pencil-writing on it. When de-
ciphered it said: 'Wood for you. Hurry up. Approach
cautiously.' There was a signature, but it was illegible
-- not Kurtz -- a much longer word. 'Hurry up.'
Where? Up the river? 'Approach cautiously.' We had
not done so. But the warning could not have been
meant for the place where it could be only found
after approach. Something was wrong above. But
what -- and how much? That was the question. We
commented adversely upon the imbecility of that
telegraphic style. The bush around said nothing, and
would not let us look very far either. A torn curtain
of red twill hung in the doorway of the hut, and
flapped sadly in our faces. The dwelling was dis-
mantled; but we could see a white man had lived
there not very long ago. There remained a rude table
-- a plank on two posts; a heap of rubbish reposed in
a dark corner, and by the door I picked up a book. It
had lost its covers, and the pages had been thumbed
into a state of extremely dirty softness; but the back
had been lovingly stitched afresh with white cotton
thread, which looked clean yet. It was an extraordi-
nary find. Its title was, An Inquiry into some Points
of Seamanship, by a man Towser, Towson -- some such
name -- Master in his Majesty's Navy. The matter
looked dreary reading enough, with illustrative dia-
grams and repulsive tables of figures, and the copy
was sixty years old. I handled this amazing antiquity
with the greatest possible tenderness, lest it should
dissolve in my hands. Within, Towson or Towser was
inquiring earnestly into the breaking strain of ships'
chains and tackle, and other such matters. Not a very
enthralling book; but at the first glance you could
see there a singleness of intention, an honest concern
for the right way of going to work, which made these
humble pages, thought out so many years ago, lumi-
nous with another than a professional light. The
simple old sailor, with his talk of chains and purchases,
made me forget the jungle and the pilgrims in a deli-
cious sensation of having come upon something unmis-
takably real. Such a book being there was wonderful
enough but still more astounding were the notes pen-
cilled in the margin, and plainly referring to the text.
I couldn't believe my eyes! They were in cipher! Yes,
it looked like cipher. Fancy a man lugging with him
a book of that description into this nowhere and
studying it -- and making notes -- in cipher at that! It
was an extravagant mystery.
"I had been dimly aware for some time of a worry-
ing noise, and when I lifted my eyes I saw the wood-
pile was gone, and the manager, aided by all the pil-
grims, was shouting at me from the riverside. I
slipped the book into my pocket. I assure you to leave
off reading was like tearing myself away from the
shelter of an old and solid friendship.
"I started the lame engine ahead. 'It must be this
miserable trader -- this intruder,' exclaimed the man-
ager, looking back malevolently at the place we had
left. 'He must be English,' I said. 'It will not save
him from getting into trouble if he is not careful,'
muttered the manager darkly. I observed with as-
sumed innocence that no man was safe from trouble
in this world.
"The current was more rapid now, the steamer
seemed at her last gasp, the stern-wheel flopped lan-
guidly, and I caught myself listening on tiptoe for the
next beat of the boat, for in sober truth I expected the
wretched thing to give up every moment. It was like
watching the last flickers of a life. But still we crawled.
Sometimes I would pick out a tree a little way ahead
t
o measure our progress towards Kurtz by, but I lost
it invariably before we got abreast. To keep the eyes
so long on one thing was too much for human patience.
The manager displayed a beautiful resignation. I
fretted and fumed and took to arguing with myself
whether or no I would talk openly with Kurtz; but
before I could come to any conclusion it occurred to
me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action
of mine, would be a mere futility. What did it matter
what any one knew or ignored? What did it matter
who was manager? One gets sometimes such a flash
of insight. The essentials of this affair lay deep under
the surface, beyond my reach, and beyond my power
of meddling.
"Towards the evening of the second day we judged
ourselves about eight miles from Kurtz's station. I
wanted to push on; but the manager looked grave,
and told me the navigation up there was so dangerous
that it would be advisable, the sun being very low
already, to wait where we were till next morning.
Moreover, he pointed out that if the warning to ap-
proach cautiously were to be followed, we must ap-
proach in daylight -- not at dusk or in the dark. This
was sensible enough. Eight miles meant nearly three
hours' steaming for us, and I could also see suspicious
ripples at the upper end of the reach. Nevertheless,
I was annoyed beyond expression at the delay, and
most unreasonably, too, since one night more could
not matter much after so many months. As we had
plenty of wood, and caution was the word, I brought
up in the middle of the stream. The reach was narrow,
straight, with high sides like a railway cutting. The
dusk came gliding into it long before the sun had set.
The current ran smooth and swift, but a dumb immo-
bility sat on the banks. The living trees, lashed to-
gether by the creepers and every living bush of the
undergrowth, might have been changed into stone,
even to the slenderest twig, to the lightest leaf. It
was not sleep -- it seemed unnatural, like a state of
trance. Not the faintest sound of any kind could be
heard. You looked on amazed, and began to suspect
yourself of being deaf-- then the night came sud-
denly, and struck you blind as well. About three in the
morning some large fish leaped, and the loud splash
made me jump as though a gun had been fired. When
the sun rose there was a white fog, very warm and
clammy, and more blinding than the night. It did not
shift or drive; it was just there, standing all round
you like something solid. At eight or nine, perhaps, it
lifted as a shutter lifts. We had a glimpse of the
towering multitude of trees, of the immense matted
jungle, with the blazing little ball of the sun hanging
over it -- all perfectly still -- and then the white shutter
came down again, smoothly, as if sliding in greased
grooves. I ordered the chain, which we had begun to
heave in, to be paid out again. Before it stopped run-
ning with a muffled rattle, a cry, a very loud cry, as of
infinite desolation, soared slowly in the opaque air. It
ceased. A complaining clamour, modulated in savage
discords, filled our ears. The sheer unexpectedness of
it made my hair stir under my cap. I don't know how
it struck the others: to me it seemed as though the
mist itself had screamed, so suddenly, and apparently
from all sides at once, did this tumultuous and mourn-
ful uproar arise. It culminated in a hurried outbreak
of almost intolerably escessive shrieking, which
stopped short, leaving us stiffened in a variety of silly
attitudes, and obstinately listening to the nearly as
appalling and excessive silence. 'Good God! What is
the meaning --' stammered at my elbow one of the
pilgrims -- a little fat man, with sandy hair and red
whiskers, who wore sidespring boots, and pink py-
jamas tucked into his socks. Two others remained
open-mouthed a whole minute, then dashed into the
little cabin, to rush out incontinently and stand dart-
ing scared glances, with Winchesters at 'ready' in
their hands. What we could see was just the steamer
we were on, her outlines blurred as though she had
been on the point of dissolving, and a misty strip of
water, perhaps two feet broad, around her -- and that
was all. The rest of the world was nowhere, as far as
our eyes and ears were concerned. Just nowhere.
Gone, disappeared; swept off without leaving a
whisper or a shadow behind.
"I went forward, and ordered the chain to be
hauled in short, so as to be ready to trip the anchor
Heart of Darkness Page 6