Heart of Darkness

by Joseph Conrad

frightful gash; my shoes were full; a pool of blood

  lay very still, gleaming dark-red under the wheel; his

  eyes shone with an amazing lustre. The fusillade burst

  out again. He looked at me anxiously, gripping the

  spear like something precious, with an air of being

  afraid I would try to take it away from him. I had to

  make an effort to free my eyes from his gaze and

  attend to the steering. With one hand I felt above my

  head for the line of the steam whistle, and jerked out

  screech after screech hurriedly. The tumult of angry

  and warlike yells was checked instantly, and then from

  the depths of the woods went out such a tremulous

  and prolonged wail of mournful fear and utter despair

  as may be imagined to follow the flight of the last

  hope from the earth. There was a great commotion in

  the bush; the shower of arrows stopped, a few drop-

  ping shots rang out sharply -- then silence, in which

  the languid beat of the stern-wheel came plainly to

  my ears. I put the helm hard a-starboard at the mo-

  ment when the pilgrim in pink pyjamas, very hot and

  agitated, appeared in the doorway. 'The manager

  sends me --' he began in an official tone, and stopped

  short. 'Good God!' he said, glaring at the wounded

  man.

  "We two whites stood over him, and his lustrous

  and inquiring glance enveloped us both. I declare it

  looked as though he would presently put to us some

  question in an understandable language; but he died

  without uttering a sound, without moving a limb,

  without twitching a muscle. Only in the very last

  moment, as though in response to some sign we could

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

  frowned heavily, and that frown gave to his black

  death-mask an inconceivably sombre, brooding, and

  menacing expression. The lustre of inquiring glance

  faded swiftly into vacant glassiness. 'Can you steer?'

  I asked the agent eagerly. He looked very dubious; but

  I made a grab at his arm, and he understood at once

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

  truth, I was morbidly anxious to change my shoes and

  socks. 'He is dead,' murmured the fellow, immensely

  impressed. 'No doubt about it,' said I, tugging like

  mad at the shoe laces. 'And by the way, I suppose Mr.

  Kurtz is dead as well by this time.'

  "For the moment that was the dominant thought.

  There was a sense of extreme disappointment, as

  though I had found out I had been striving after some-

  thing altogether without a substance. I couldn't have

  been more disgusted if I had travelled all this way

  for the sole purpose of talking with Mr. Kurtz. Talk-

  ing with . . . I flung one shoe overboard, and became

  aware that that was exactly what I had been looking

  forward to -- a talk with Kurtz. I made the strange

  discovery that I had never imagined him as doing,

  you know, but as discoursing. I didn't say to myself,

  'Now I will never see him,' or 'Now I will never shake

  him by the hand,' but, 'Now I will never hear him.'

  The man presented himself as a voice. Not of course

  that I did not connect him with some sort of action.

  Hadn't I been told in all the tones of jealousy and

  admiration that he had collected, bartered, swindled,

  or stolen more ivory than all the other agents to-

  gether? That was not the point. The point was in his

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

  one that stood out preeminently, that carried with it

  a sense of real presence, was his ability to talk, his

  words -- the gift of expression, the bewildering, the

  illuminating, the most exalted and the most con-

  temptible, the pulsating stream of light, or the deceit-

  ful flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness.

  "The other shoe went flying unto the devil-god of

  that river. I thought, 'By Jove! it's all over. We are

  too late; he has vanished -- the gift has vanished, by

  means of some spear, arrow, or club. I will never hear

  that chap speak after all' -- and my sorrow had a star-

  tling extravagance of emotion, even such as I had

  noticed in the howling sorrow of these savages in the

  bush. I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation

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

  my destiny in life.... Why do you sigh in this

  beastly way, somebody? Absurd? Well, absurd. Good

  Lord! mustn't a man ever -- Here, give me some

  tobacco."...

  There was a pause of profourd stillness, then a

  match flared, and Marlow's lean face appeared, worn,

  hollow, with downward folds and dropped eyelids,

  with an aspect of concentrated abtention; and as he

  took vigorous draws at his pipe, it seemed to retreat

  and advance out of the night in the regular flicker of

  tiny flame. The match went out.

  "Absurd!" he cried. "This is the worst of trying to

  tell.... Here you all are, each moored with two

  good addresses, like a hulk with two anchors, a butcher

  round one corner, a policeman round another, excel-

  lent appetites, and temperature normal -- you hear --

  normal from year's end to year's end. And you say,

  Absurd! Absurd be -- exploded! Absurd! My dear

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

  sheer nervousness had just flung overboard a pair of

  new shoes! Now I think of it, it is amazing I did not

  shed tears. I am, upon the whole, proud of my forti-

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

  the inestimable privilege of listening to the gifted

  Kurtz. Of course I was wrong. The privilege was

  waiting for me. Oh, yes, I heard more than enough.

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

  than a voice. And I heard -- him -- it -- this voice -- other

  voices -- all of them were so little more than voices --

  and the memory of that time itself lingers around me,

  impalpable, like a dying vibration of one immense

  jabber, silly, atrocious, sordid, savage, or simply mean,

  without any kind of sense. Voices, voices -- even the

  girl herself -- now --"

  He was silent for a long time.

  "I laid the ghost of his gifts at last with a lie," he

  began, suddenly. "Girl! What? Did I mention a girl?

  Oh, she is out of it -- completely. They -- the women

  I mean -- are out of it -- should be out of it. We must

  help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own,

  lest ours gets worse. Oh, she had to be out of it. You

  should have heard the disinterred body of Mr. Kurtz

  saying, 'My Intended.' You would have perceived

  directly then how completely she was out of it. And

  the lofty frontal bone of Mr. Kurtz! They say the

  hair goes on growing sometimes, but this -- ah -- speci-

  men, was impressively bald. The wilderness had

  patted him on the head, and, behold, it was like a ball

  -- an ivory ball; it had caressed him, and -- lo! -- he

  had
withered; it had taken him, loved him, embraced

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

  his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of

  some devilish initiation. He was its spoiled and pam-

  pered favourite. Ivory? I should think so. Heaps of

  it, stacks of it. The old mud shanty was bursting with

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

  either above or below the ground in the whole

  country. 'Mostly fossil,' the manager had remarked,

  disparagingly. It was no more fossil than I am; but

  they call it fossil when it is dug up. It appears these

  niggers do bury the tusks sometimes -- but evidently

  they couldn't bury this parcel deep enough to save the

  gifted Mr. Kurtz from his fate. We filled the steam-

  boat with it, and had to pile a lot on the deck. Thus

  he could see and enjoy as long as he could see, because

  the appreciation of this favour had remained with him

  to the last. You should have heard him say, 'My

  ivory.' Oh, yes, I heard him. 'My Intended, my ivory,

  my station, my river, my --' everything belonged

  to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of

  hearing the wilderness burst into a prodigious peal

  of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their

  places. Everything belonged to him -- but that was a

  trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to,

  how many powers of darkness claimed him for their

  own. That was the reflection that made you creepy all

  over. It was impossible -- it was not good for one either

  -- trying to imagine. He had taken a high seat amongst

  the devils of the land -- I mean literally. You can't

  understand. How could you? -- with solid pavement

  under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbours

  ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping deli-

  cately between the butcher and the policeman, in

  the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic

  asylums -- how can you imagine what particular region

  of the first ages a man's untrammelled feet may take

  him into by the way of solitude -- utter solitude

  without a policeman -- by the way of silence -- utter

  silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbour

  can be heard whispering of public opinion? These

  little things make all the great difference. When they

  are gone you must fall back upon your own innate

  strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness. Of

  course you may be too much of a fool to go wrong --

  too dull even to know you are being assaulted by the

  powers of darkness. I take it, no fool ever made a

  bargain for his soul with the devil; the fool is too

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

  -- I don't know which. Or you may be such a

  thunderingly exalted creature as to be altogether

  deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and

  sounds. Then the earth for you is only a standing

  place -- and whether to be like this is your loss or

  your gain I won't pretend to say. But most of us are

  neither one nor the other. The earth for us is a

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

  with sounds, with smells, too, by Jove! -- breathe

  dead hippo, so to speak, and not be contaminated. And

  there, don't you see? Your strength comes in, the

  faith in your ability for the digging of unostentatious

  holes to bury the stuff in -- your power of devotion,

  not to yourself, but to an obscure back-breaking busi-

  ness. And that's difficult enough. Mind, I am not

  trying to excuse or even explain -- I am trying to ac-

  count to myself for -- for -- Mr. Kurtz -- for the shade

  of Mr. Kurtz. This initiated wraith from the back of

  Nowhere honoured me with its amazing confidence

  before it vanished altogether. This was because it

  could speak English to me. The original Kurtz had

  been educated partly in England, and -- as he was

  good enough to say himself -- his sympathies were in

  the right place. His mother was half-English, his

  father was half-French. All Europe contributed to

  the making of Kurtz; and by and by I learned

  that, most appropriately, the International Society

  for the Suppression of Savage Customs had intrusted

  him with the making of a report, for its future guid-

  ance. And he had written it, too. I've seen it. I've

  read it. It was eloquent, vibrating with eloquence,

  but too high-strung, I think. Seventeen pages of

  close writing he had found time for! But this must

  have been before his -- let us say -- nerves, went

  wrong, and caused him to preside at certain midnight

  dances ending with unspeakable rites, which -- as far

  as I reluctantly gathered from what I heard at various

  times -- were offered up to him -- do you under-

  stand? -- to Mr. Kurtz himself. But it was a beautiful

  piece of writing. The opening paragraph, however,

  in the light of later information, strikes me now as

  ominous. He began with the argument that we whites,

  from the point of development we had arrived at,

  'must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the

  nature of supernatural beings -- we approach them

  with the might as of a deity,' and so on, and so on. 'By

  the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power

  for good practically unbounded,' etc., etc. From that

  point he soared and took me with him. The peroration

  was magnificent, though difficult to remember, you

  know. It gave me the notion of an exotic Immensity

  ruled by an august Benevolence. It made me tingle

  with enthusiasm. This was the unbounded power of

  eloquence -- of words -- of burning noble words. There

  were no practical hints to interrupt the magic current

  of phrases, unless a kind of note at the foot of the last

  page, scrawled evidently much later, in an unsteady

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

  It was very simple, and at the end of that moving

  appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you,

  luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a

  serene sky: 'Exterminate all the brutes!' The curious

  part was that he had apparently forgotten all about

  that valuable postscriptum, because, later on, when he

  in a sense came to himself, he repeatedly entreated me

  to take good care of 'my pamphlet' (he called it), as it

  was sure to have in the future a good influence upon

  his career. I had full information about all these

  things, and, besides, as it turned out, I was to have

  the care of his memory. I've done enough for it to

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

  for an everlasting rest in the dust-bin of progress,

  amongst all the sweepings and, figuratively speaking,

  all the dead cats of civilization. But then, you see, I

  can't choose. He won't be forgotten. Whatever he

  was, he was not common. He had the power to charm

  or frighten rudimentary souls into an aggravated

  witch-dance in his h
onour; he could also fill the small

  souls of the pilgrims with bitter misgivings: he had

  one devoted friend at least, and he had conquered one

  soul in the world that was neither rudimentary nor

  tainted with self-seeking. No; I can't forget him,

  though I am not prepared to affirm the fellow was

  exactly worth the life we lost in getting to him. I

  missed my late helmsman awfully -- I missed him

  even while his body was still lying in the pilot-house.

  Perhaps you will think it passing strange this regret

  for a savage who was no more account than a grain of

  sand in a black Sahara. Well, don't you see, he had

  done something, he had steered; for months I had

  him at my back -- a help -- an instrument. It was a kind

  of partnership. He steered for me -- I had to look after

  him, I worried about his deficiencies, and thus a subtle

  bond had been created, of which I only became aware

  when it was suddenly broken. And the intimate pro-

  fundity of that look he gave me when he received his

  hurt remains to this day in my memory -- like a claim

  of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment.

  "Poor fool! If he had only left that shutter alone.

  He had no restraint, no restraint just like Kurtz -- a

  tree swayed by the wind. As soon as I had put on a dry

  pair of slippers, I dragged him out, after first jerking

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

  performed with my eyes shut tight. His heels leaped

  together over the little doorstep; his shoulders were

  pressed to my breast; I hugged him from behind des-

  perately. Oh! he was heavy, heavy; heavier than any

  man on earth, I should imagine. Then without more

  ado I tipped him overboard. The current snatched

  him as though he had been a wisp of grass, and I saw

  the body roll over twice before I lost sight of it for

  ever. All the pilgrims and the manager were then

  congregated on the awning-deck about the pilot-house,

  chattering at each other like a flock of excited magpies,

  and there was a scandalized murmur at my heartless

  promptitude. What they wanted to keep that body

  hanging about for I can't guess. Embalm it, maybe.

  But I had also heard another, and a very ominous,

  murmur on the deck below. My friends the wood-

  cutters were likewise scandalized, and with a better

  show of reason -- though I admit that the reason itself

  was quite inadmissible. Oh, quite! I had made up my

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

  fishes alone should have him. He had been a very

  second-rate helmsman while alive, but now he was

  dead he might have become a first-class temptation,

  and possibly cause some startling trouble. Besides, I

  was anxious to take the wheel, the man in pink py-

  jamas showing himself a hopeless duffer at the busi-

  ness.

  "This I did directly the simple funeral was over.

  We were going half-speed, keeping right in the middle

  of the stream, and I listened to the talk about me.

  They had given up Kurtz, they had given up the

  station; Kurtz was dead, and the station had been

  burnt -- and so on -- and so on. The red-haired pilgrim

  was beside himself with the thought that at least this

  poor Kurtz had been properly avenged. 'Say! We

  must have made a glorious slaughter of them in the

  bush. Eh? What do you think? Say?' He positively

  danced, the bloodthirsty little gingery beggar. And

  he had nearly fainted when he saw the wounded man!

  I could not help saying, 'You made a glorious lot of

  smoke, anyhow.' I had seen, from the way the tops

  of the bushes rustled and flew, that almost all the

  shots had gone too high. You can't hit anything unless

  you take aim and fire from the shoulder; but these

  chaps fired from the hip with their eyes shut. The

  retreat, I maintained -- and I was right -- was caused

  by the screeching of the steam whistle. Upon this

  they forgot Kurtz, and began to howl at me with

  indignant protests.

  "The manager stood by the wheel murmuring con-

  fidentially about the necessity of getting well away

  down the river before dark at all events, when I saw

  in the distance a clearing on the riverside and the

  outlines of some sort of building. 'What's this?' I

  asked. He clapped his hands in wonder. 'The station!'

  he cried. I edged in at once, still going half-speed.

  "Through my glasses I saw the slope of a hill inter-

  spersed with rare trees and perfectly free from under-

  growth. A long decaying building on the summit was

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

  peaked roof gaped black from afar; the jungle and