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
Heart of Darkness Page 8
