path. They walked erect and slow, balancing small
baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink
kept time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound
round their loins, and the short ends behind waggled
to and fro like tails. I could see every rib, the joints of
their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an
iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together
with a chain whose bights swung between them,
rhythmically clinking. Another report from the cliff
made me think suddenly of that ship of war I had
seen firing into a continent. It was the same kind of
ominous voice; but these men could by no stretch of
imagination be called enemies. They were called
criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting
shells, had come to them, an insoluble mystery from
the sea. All their meagre breasts panted together, the
violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared
stonily uphill. They passed me within six inches, with-
out a glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference
of unhappy savages. Behind this raw matter one of the
reclaimed, the product of the new forces at work,
strolled despondently, carrying a rifle by its middle.
He had a uniform jacket with one button off, and
seeing a white man on the path, hoisted his weapon to
his shoulder with alacrity. This was simple prudence,
white men being so much alike at a distance that he
could not tell who I might be. He was speedily re-
assured, and with a large, white, rascally grin, and a
glance at his charge, seemed to take me into partner-
ship in his exalted trust. After all, I also was a part of
the great cause of these high and just proceedings.
"Instead of going up, I turned and descended to the
left. My idea was to let that chain-gang get out of
sight before I climbed the hill. You know I am not
particularly tender; I've had to strike and to fend off.
I've had to resist and to attack sometimes -- that's only
one way of resisting -- without counting the exact cost,
according to the demands of such sort of life as I had
blundered into. I've seen the devil of violence, and
the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but,
by all the stars! these were strong, lusty, red-eyed
devils, that swayed and drove men -- men, I tell you.
But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the
blinding sunshine of that land I would become ac-
quainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil
of a rapacious and pitiless folly. How insidious he
could be, too, I was only to find out several months
later and a thousand miles farther. For a moment I
stood appalled, as though by a warning. Finally I
descended the hill, obliquely, towards the trees I had
seen.
"I avoided a vast artificial hole somebody had been
digging on the slope, the purpose of which I found it
impossible to divine. It wasn't a quarry or a sandpit,
anyhow. It was just a hole. It might have been con-
nected with the philanthropic desire of giving the
criminals something to do. I don't know. Then I
nearly fell into a very narrow ravine, almost no more
than a scar in the hillside. I discovered that a lot of
imported drainage-pipes for the settlement had been
tumbled in there. There wasn't one that was not
broken. It was a wanton smash-up. At last I got under
the trees. My purpose was to stroll into the shade for
a moment; but no sooner within than it seemed to me
I had stepped into the gloomy circle of some Inferno.
The rapids were near, and an uninterrupted, uniform,
headlong, rushing noise filled the mournful stillness
of the grove, where not a breath stirred, not a leaf
moved, with a mysterious sound -- as though the tear-
ing pace of the launched earth had suddenly become
audible.
"Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees
leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half
coming out, half effased within the dim light, in all
the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair. An-
other mine on the cliff went off, followed by a slight
shudder of the soil under my feet. The work was
going on. The work! And this was the place where
some of the helpers had withdrawn to die.
"They were dying slowly -- it was very clear. They
were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were
nothing earthly now -- nothing but black shadows of
disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the green-
ish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast
in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncon-
genial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they
sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed
to crawl away and rest. These moribund shapes were
free as air -- and nearly as thin. I began to distinguish
the gleam of the eyes under the trees. Then, glancing
down, I saw a face near my hand. The black bones
reclined at full length with one shoulder against the
tree, and slowly the eyelids rose and the sunken eyes
looked up at me, enormous and vacant, a kind of
blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs, which
died out slowly. The man seemed young -- almost a
boy -- but you know with them it's hard to tell. I
found nothing else to do but to offer him one of my
good Swede's ship's biscuits I had in my pocket. The
fingers closed slowly on it and held -- there was no
other movement and no other glance. He had tied a
bit of white worsted round his neck -- Why? Where
did he get it? Was it a badge -- an ornament -- charm
-- a propitiatory act? Was there any idea at all con-
nected with it? It looked startling round his black
neck, this bit of white thread from beyond the seas.
"Near the same tree two more bundles of acute
angles sat with their legs drawn up. One, with his
chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing, in an
intolerable and appalling manner: his brother phan-
tom rested its forehead, as if overcome with a great
weariness; and all about others were scattered in
every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture of
a massacre or a pestilence. While I stood horror-
struck, one of these creatures rose to his hands and
knees, and went off on all-fours towards the river to
drink. He lapped out of his hand, then sat up in the
sunlight, crossing his shins in front of him, and after
a time let his woolly head fall on his breastbone.
"I didn't want any more loitering in the shade, and
I made haste towards the station. When near the
buildings I met a white man, in such an unexpected
elegance of getup that in the first moment I took him
for a sort of vision. I saw a high starched collar,
white cuffs, a light alpaca jacket, snowy trousers, a
clean necktie, and varnished boots. No hat. Hair
parted, brushed, oiled, under a green-lined parasol
/> held in a big white hand. He was amazing, and had a
penholder behind his ear.
"I shook hands with this miracle, and I learned he
was the Company's chief accountant, and that all the
bookkeeping was done at this station. He had come
out for a moment, he said, 'to get a breath of fresh
air.' The expression sounded wonderfully odd, with
its suggestion of sedentary desk-life. I wouldn't have
mentioned the fellow to you at all, only it was from
his lips that I first heard the name of the man who is
so indissolubly connected with the memories of that
time. Moreover, I respected the fellow. Yes; I re-
spected his collars, his vast cuffs, his brushed hair. His
appearance was certainly that of a hairdresser's
dummy; but in the great demoralization of the land
he kept up his appearance. That's backbone. His
starched collars and got-up shirt-fronts were achieve-
ments of character. He had been out nearly three
years; and later, I could not help asking him how he
managed to sport such linen. He had just the faintest
blush, and said modestly, 'I've been teaching one of
the native women about the station. It was difficult.
She had a distaste for the work.' Thus this man had
verily accomplished something. And he was devoted
to his books, which were in apple-pie order.
"Everything else in the station was in a muddle --
heads, things, buildings. Strings of dusty niggers with
splay feet arrived and departed; a stream of manu-
factured goods, rubbishy cottons, beads, and brass-
wire set into the depths of darkness, and in return
came a precious trickle of ivory.
"I had to wait in the station for ten days -- an
eternity. I lived in a hut in the yard, but to be out of
the chaos I would sometimes get into the accountant's
office. It was built of horizontal planks, and so badly
put together that, as he bent over his high desk, he
was barred from neck to heels with narrow strips of
sunlight. There was no need to open the big shutter to
see. It was hot there, too; big flies buzzed fiendishly,
and did not sting, but stabbed. I sat generally on the
floor, while, of faultless appearance (and even slightly
scented), perching on a high stool, he wrote, he wrote.
Sometimes he stood up for exercise. When a truckle-
bed with a sick man (some invalid agent from up-
country) was put in there, he exhibited a gentle an-
noyance. 'The groans of this sick person,' he said,
'distract my attention. And without that it is ex-
tremely difficult to guard against clerical errors in
this climate.'
"One day he remarked, without lifting his head,
'In the interior you will no doubt meet Mr. Kurtz.'
On my asking who Mr. Kurtz was, he said he was a
first-class agent; and seeing my disappointment at
this information, he added slowly, laying down his
pen, 'He is a very remarkable person.' Further ques-
tions elicited from him that Mr. Kurtz was at present
in charge of a trading-post, a very important one, in
the true ivory-country, at 'the very bottom of there.
Sends in as much ivory as all the others put together
. .' He began to write again. The sick man was too
ill to groan. The flies buzzed in a great peace.
"Suddenly there was a growing murmur of voices
and a great tramping of feet. A caravan had come in.
A violent babble of uncouth sounds burst out on the
other side of the planks. All the carriers were speaking
together, and in the midst of the uproar the lament-
able voice of the chief agent was heard 'giving it up'
tearfully for the twentieth time that day.... He
rose slowly. 'What a frightful row,' he said. He
crossed the room gently to look at the sick man, and
returning, said to me, 'He does not hear.' 'What!
Dead?' I asked, startled. 'No, not yet,' he answered,
with great composure. Then, alluding with a toss of
the head to the tumult in the station-yard, 'When one
has got to make correct entries, one comes to hate
those savages -- hate them to the death.' He remained
thoughtful for a moment. 'When you see Mr. Kurtz'
he went on, 'tell him from me that everything here' --
he glanced at the deck -- 'is very satisfactory. I don't
like to write to him -- with those messengers of ours
you never know who may get hold of your letter -- at
that Central Station.' He stared at me for a moment
with his mild, bulging eyes. 'Oho, he will go far, very
far,' he began again. 'He will be a somebody in the
Administration before long. They, above -- the Coun-
cil in Europe, you know -- mean him to be.'
"He turned to his work. The noise outside had
ceased, and presently in going out I stopped at the
door. In the steady buzz of flies the homeward-bound
agent was lying flushed and insensible; the other,
bent over his books, was making correct entries of
perfectly correct transactions; and fifty feet below the
doorstep I could see the still treetops of the grove of
death.
"Next day I left that station at last, with a caravan
of sixty men, for a two-hundred-mile tramp.
"No use telling you much about that. Paths, paths,
everywhere; a stamped-in network of paths spreading
over the empty land, through the long grass, through
burnt grass, through thickets, down and up chilly
ravines, up and down stony hills ablaze with heat;
and a solitude, a solitude, nobody, not a hut. The
population had cleared out a long time ago. Well, if
a lot of mysterious niggers armed with all kinds of
fearful weapons suddenly took to travelling on the
road between Deal and Gravesend, catching the yo-
kels right and left to carry heavy loads for them, I
fancy every farm and cottage thereabouts would
get empty very soon. Only here the dwellings were
gone, too. Still I passed through several abandoned
villages. There's something pathetically childish in
the ruins of grass walls. Day after day, with the stamp
and shuffle of sixty pair of bare feet behind me, each
pair under a 60-lb. load. Camp, cook, sleep, strike
camp, march. Now and then a carrier dead in harness,
at rest in the long grass near the path, with an empty
water-gourd and his long staff lying by his side. A
great silence around and above. Perhaps on some
quiet night the tremor of far-off drums, sinking, swell-
ing, a tremor vast, faint; a sound weird, appealing,
suggestive, and wild -- and perhaps with as profound
a meaning as the sound of bells in a Christian country.
Once a white man in an unbuttoned uniform, camping
on the path with an armed escort of lank Zanzibaris,
very hospitable and festive -- not to say drunk. Was
looking after the upkeep of the road, he declared.
Can't say I saw any road or any upkeep, unless the
body of a middle-aged negro, with a bullet-ho
le in the
forehead, upon which I absolutely stumbled three
miles farther on, may be considered as a permanent
improvement. I had a white companion, too, not a bad
chap, but rather too fleshy and with the exasperating
habit of fainting on the hot hillsides, miles away from
the least bit of shade and water. Annoying, you know,
to hold your own coat like a parasol over a man's
head while he is coming to. I couldn't help asking him
once what he meant by coming there at all. 'To make
money, of course. What do you think?' he said, scorn-
fully. Then he got fever, and had to be carried in a
hammock slung under a pole. As he weighed sixteen
stone I had no end of rows with the carriers. They
jibbed, ran away, sneaked off with their loads in the
night -- quite a mutiny. So, one evening, I made a
speech in English with gestures, not one of which was
lost to the sixty pairs of eyes before me, and the next
morning I started the hammock off in front all right.
An hour afterwards I came upon the whole concern
wrecked in a bush -- man, hammock, groans, blankets,
horrors. The heavy pole had skinned his poor nose.
He was very anxious for me to kill somebody, but
there wasn't the shadow of a carrier near. I remem-
bered the old doctor -- 'It would be interesting for
science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on
the spot.' I felt I was becoming scientifically interest-
ing. However, all that is to no purpose. On the fif-
teenth day I came in sight of the big river again, and
hobbled into the Central Station. It was on a back
water surrounded by scrub and forest, with a pretty
border of smelly mud on one side, and on the three
others enclosed by a crazy fence of rushes. A ne-
glected gap was all the gate it had, and the first glance
at the place was enough to let you see the flabby devil
was running that show. White men with long staves in
their hands appeared languidly from amongst the
buildings, strolling up to take a look at me, and then
retired out of sight somewhere. One of them, a stout,
excitable chap with black moustaches, informed me
with great volubility and many digressions, as soon
as I told him who I was, that my steamer was at the
bottom of the river. I was thunderstruck. What, how,
why? Oh, it was 'all right.' The 'manager himself'
was there. All quite correct. 'Everybody had behaved
splendidly! splendidly!' -- 'you must,' he said in agi-
tation, 'go and see the general manager at once. He is
waiting!'
"I did not see the real significance of that wreck at
once. I fancy I see it now, but I am not sure not at
all. Certainly the affair was too stupid -- when I think
of it -- to be altogether natural. Still . . . But at the
moment it presented itself simply as a confounded
nuisance. The steamer was sunk. They had started
two days before in a sudden hurry up the river with
the manager on board, in charge of some volunteer
skipper, and before they had been out three hours
they tore the bottom out of her on stones, and she
sank near the south bank. I asked myself what I was
to do there, now my boat was lost. As a matter of fact,
I had plenty to do in fishing my command out of the
river. I had to set about it the very next day. That,
and the repairs when I brought the pieces to the sta-
tion, took some months.
"My first interview with the manager was curious.
He did not ask me to sit down after my twenty-mile
walk that morning. He was commonplace in com-
plexion, in feature, in manners, and in voice. He was
of middle size and of ordinary build. His eyes, of the
usual blue, were perhaps remarkably cold, and he
certainly could make his glance fall on one as trench-
ant and heavy as an axe. But even at these times the
rest of his person seemed to disclaim the intention.
Otherwise there was only an indefinable, faint expres-
sion of his lips, something stealthy -- a smile -- not a
smile -- I remember it, but I can't explain. It was un-
conscious, this smile was, though just after he had
said something it got intensified for an instant. It
came at the end of his speeches like a seal applied on
the words to make the meaning of the commonest
phrase appear absolutely inscrutable. He was a com-
mon trader, from his youth up employed in these
parts -- nothing more. He was obeyed, yet he inspired
neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired
uneasiness. That was it! Uneasiness. Not a definite
mistrust -- just uneasiness -- nothing more. You have
Heart of Darkness Page 3
