the woods made a background. There was no en-
closure or fence of any kind; but there had been one
apparently, for near the house half-a-dozen slim posts
remained in a row, roughly trimmed, and with their
upper ends ornamented with round carved balls. The
rails, or whatever there had been between, had dis-
appeared. Of course the forest surrounded all that.
The river-bank was clear, and on the waterside I saw
a white man under a hat like a cartwheel beckoning
persistently with his whole arm. Examining the edge
of the forest above and below, I was almost certain I
could see movements -- human forms gliding here and
there. I steamed past prudently, then stopped the
engines and let her drift down. The man on the shore
began to shout, urging us to land. 'We have been at-
tacked,' screamed the manager. 'I know -- I know. It's
all right,' yelled back the other, as cheerful as you
please. 'Come along. It's all right. I am glad.'
"His aspect reminded me of something I had seen
-- something funny I had seen somewhere. As I
manoeuvred to get alongside, I was asking myself,
'What does this fellow look like?' Suddenly I got it.
He looked like a harlequin. His clothes had been
made of some stuff that was brown holland probably,
but it was covered with patches all over, with bright
patches, blue, red, and yellow -- patches on the back,
patches on the front, patches on elbows, on knees;
coloured binding around his jacket, scarlet edging at
the bottom of his trousers; and the sunshine made
him look extremely gay and wonderfully neat withal,
because you could see how beautifully all this patching
had been done. A beardless, boyish face, very fair, no
features to speak of, nose peeling, little blue eyes,
smiles and frowns chasing each other over that open
countenance like sunshine and shadow on a wind-
swept plain. 'Look out, captain!' he cried; 'there's a
snag lodged in here last night.' What! Another snag?
I confess I swore shamefully. I had nearly holed my
cripple, to finish off that charming trip. The harlequin
on the bank turned his little pug-nose up to me. 'You
English?' he asked, all smiles. 'Are you?' I shouted
from the wheel. The smiles vanished, and he shook
his head as if sorry for my disappointment. Then he
brightened up. 'Never mind!' he cried encouragingly.
'Are we in time?' I asked. 'He is up there,' he replied,
with a toss of the head up the hill, and becoming
gloomy all of a sudden. His face was like the autumn
sky, overcast one moment and bright the next.
"When the manager, escorted by the pilgrims, all
of them armed to the teeth, had gone to the house
this chap came on board. 'I say, I don't like this.
These natives are in the bush,' I said. He assured me
earnestly it was all right. 'They are simple people,' he
added; 'well, I am glad you came. It took me all my
time to keep them off.' 'But you said it was all right,'
I cried. 'Oh, they meant no harm,' he said; and as I
stared he corrected himself, 'Not exactly.' Then viva-
ciously, 'My faith, your pilot-house wants a clean-up!'
In the next breath he advised me to keep enough
steam on the boiler to blow the whistle in case of
any trouble. 'One good screech will do more for you
than all your rifles. They are simple people,' he
repeated. He rattled away at such a rate he quite over-
whelmed me. He seemed to be trying to make up for
lots of silence, and actually hinted, laughing, that
such was the case. 'Don't you talk with Mr. Kurtz?' I
said. 'You don't talk with that man -- you listen to him,'
he exclaimed with severe exaltation. 'But now --' He
waved his arm, and in the twinkling of an eye was in
the uttermost depths of despondency. In a moment he
came up again with a jump, possessed himself of both
my hands, shook them continuously, while he
gabbled: 'Brother sailor . . . honour . . . pleasure
. . delight . . .introduce myself . . . Russian . . .
son of an arch-priest . . . Government of Tambov
. . What? Tobacco! English tobacco; the excellent
English tobacco! Now, that's brotherly. Smoke?
Where's a sailor that does not smoke?'
"The pipe soothed him, and gradually I made out
he had run away from school, had gone to sea in a
Russian ship; ran away again; served some time in
English ships; was now reconciled with the arch-
priest. He made a point of that. 'But when one is
young one must see things, gather experience, ideas;
enlarge the mind.' 'Here!' I interrupted. 'You can
never tell! Here I met Mr. Kurtz,' he said, youth
fully solemn and reproachful. I held my tongue after
that. It appears he had persuaded a Dutch trading-
house on the coast to fit him out with stores and goods,
and had started for the interior with a light heart
and no more idea of what would happen to him than
a baby. He had been wandering about that river for
nearly two years alone, cut off from everybody and
everything. 'I am not so young as I look. I am twenty-
five,' he said. 'At first old Van Shuyten would tell me
to go to the devil,' he narrated with keen enjoyment;
'but I stuck to him, and talked and talked, till at last
he got afraid I would talk the hind-leg off his favour-
ite dog, so he gave me some cheap things and a few
guns, and told me he hoped he would never see my
face again. Good old Dutchman, Van Shuyten. I've
sent him one small lot of ivory a year ago, so that he
can't call me a little thief when I get back. I hope he
got it. And for the rest I don't care. I had some wood
stacked for you. That was my old house. Did you see?'
"I gave him Towson's book. He made as though he
would kiss me, but restrained himself. 'The only book
I had left, and I thought I had lost it,' he said, looking
at it ecstatically. 'So many accidents happen to a man
going about alone, you know. Canoes get upset some-
times -- and sometimes you've got to clear out so quick
when the people get angry.' He thumbed the pages.
'You made notes in Russian?' I asked. He nodded. 'I
thought they were written in cipher,' I said. He
laughed, then became serious. 'I had lots of trouble
to keep these people off,' he said. 'Did they want to
kill you?' I asked. 'Oh, no!' he cried, and checked
himself. 'Why did they attack us?' I pursued. He
hesitated, then said shamefacedly, 'They don't want
him to go.' 'Don't they?' I said curiously. He nodded
a nod full of mystery and wisdom. 'I tell you,' he
cried, 'this man has enlarged my mind.' He opened
his arms wide, staring at me with his little blue eyes
that were perfectly round."
III
"I looked at him, lost in astonishment. There he
was before me, in motley, as though he had absconded
from
a troupe of mimes, enthusiastic, fabulous. His
very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and alto-
gether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It
was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had
succeeded in getting so far, how he had managed to
remain -- why he did not instantly disappear. 'I went
a little farther,' he said, 'then still a little farther --
till I had gone so far that I don't know how I'll ever
get back. Never mind. Plenty time. I can manage.
You take Kurtz away quick -- quick -- I tell you.' The
glamour of youth enveloped his parti-coloured rags,
his destitution, his loneliness, the essential desolation
of his futile wanderings. For months -- for years -- his
life hadn't been worth a day's purchase; and there he
was gallantly, thoughtlessly alive, to all appearance
indestructible solely by the virtue of his few years and
of his unreflecting audacity. I was seduced into some-
thing like admiration -- like envy. Glamour urged him
on, glamour kept him unscathed. He surely wanted
nothing from the wilderness but space to breathe in
and to push on through. His need was to exist, and to
move onwards at the greatest possible risk, and with
a maximum of privation. If the absolutely pure, un-
calculating, unpractical spirit of adventure had ever
ruled a human being, it ruled this bepatched youth.
I almost envied him the possession of this modest and
clear flame. It seemed to have consumed all thought
of self so completely, that even while he was talking
to you, you forgot that it was he -- the man before
your eyes -- who had gone through these things. I
did not envy him his devotion to Kurtz, though. He
had not meditated over it. It came to him, and he ac-
cepted it with a sort of eager fatalism. I must say that
to me it appeared about the most dangerous thing in
every way he had come upon so far.
"They had come together unavoidably, like two
ships becalmed near each other, and lay rubbing sides
at last. I suppose Kurtz wanted an audience, because
on a certain occasion, when encamped in the forest,
they had talked all night, or more probably Kurtz
had talked. 'We talked of everything,' he said, quite
transported at the recollection. 'I forgot there was
such a thing as sleep. The night did not seem to last
an hour. Everything! Everything! . . . Of love,
too.' 'Ah, he talked to you of love!' I said, much
amused. 'It isn't what you think,' he cried, almost
passionately. 'It was in general. He made me see
things -- things.'
"He threw his arms up. We were on deck at the
time, and the headman of my wood cutters, lounging
near by, turned upon him his heavy and glittering
eyes. I looked around, and I don't know why, but I
assure you that never, never before, did this land,
this river, this jungle, the very arch of this blazing
sky, appear to me so hopeless and so dark, so impene-
trable to human thought, so pitiless to human weak-
ness. 'And, ever since, you have been with him, of
course?' I said.
"On the contrary. It appears their intercourse had
been very much broken by various causes. He had, as
he informed me proudly, managed to nurse Kurtz
through two illnesses (he alluded to it as you would
to some risky feat), but as a rule Kurtz wandered
alone, far in the depths of the forest. 'Very often
coming to this station, I had to wait days and days
before he would turn up,' he said. 'Ah, it was worth
waiting for! -- sometimes.' 'What was he doing? ex-
ploring or what?' I asked. 'Oh, yes, of course', he
had discovered lots of villages, a lake, too -- he did not
know exactly in what direction; it was dangerous to
inquire too much -- but mostly his expeditions had
been for ivory. 'But he had no goods to trade with by
that time,' I objected. 'There's a good lot of cartridges
left even yet,' he answered, looking away. 'To speak
plainly, he raided the country,' I said. He nodded.
'Not alone, surely!' He muttered something about
the villages round that lake. 'Kurtz got the tribe to
follow him, did he?' I suggested. He fidgeted a little.
'They adored him,' he said. The tone of these words
was so extraordinary that I looked at him searchingly.
It was curious to see his mingled eagerness and reluc-
tance to speak of Kurtz. The man filled his life, occu-
pied his thoughts, swayed his emotions. 'What can
you expect?' he burst out; 'he came to them with
thunder and lightning, you know -- and they had never
seen anything like it -- and very terrible. He could be
very terrible. You can't judge Mr. Kurtz as you
would an ordinary man. No, no, no! Now -- just to
give you an idea -- I don't mind telling you, he wanted
to shoot me, too, one day -- but I don't judge him.'
'Shoot you!' I cried 'What for?' 'Well, I had a small
lot of ivory the chief of that village near my house
gave me. You see I used to shoot game for them.
Well, he wanted it, and wouldn't hear reason. He
declared he would shoot me unless I gave him the
ivory and then cleared out of the country, because
he could do so, and had a fancy for it, and there was
nothing on earth to prevent him killing whom he
jolly well pleased. And it was true, too. I gave him
the ivory. What did I care! But I didn't clear out.
No, no. I couldn't leave him. I had to be careful,
of course, till we got friendly again for a time. He
had his second illness then. Afterwards I had to
keep out of the way; but I didn't mind. He was
living for the most part in those villages on the lake.
When he came down to the river, sometimes he would
take to me, and sometimes it was better for me to be
careful. This man suffered too much. He hated all
this, and somehow he couldn't get away. When I had
a chance I begged him to try and leave while there was
time; I offered to go back with him. And he would
say yes, and then he would remain; go off on another
ivory hunt; disappear for weeks; forget himself
amongst these people -- forget himself -- you know.'
'Why! he's mad,' I said. He protested indignantly.
Mr. Kurtz couldn't be mad. If I had heard him talk,
only two days ago, I wouldn't dare hint at such a
thing. . . . I had taken up my binoculars while we
talked, and was looking at the shore, sweeping the
limit of the forest at each side and at the back of the
house. The consciousness of there being people in that
bush, so silent, so quiet -- as silent and quiet as the
ruined house on the hill -- made me uneasy. There was
no sign on the face of nature of this amazing tale that
was not so much told as suggested to me in desolate
exclamations, completed by shrugs, in interrupted
phrases, in hints ending in deep sighs. The woods
were unmoved, like a
mask -- heavy, like the closed
door of a prison -- they looked with their air of hidden
knowledge, of patient expectation, of unapproachable
silence. The Russian was explaining to me that it was
only lately that Mr. Kurtz had come down to the
river, bringing along with him all the fighting men
of that lake tribe. He had been absent for several
months -- getting himself adored, I suppose -- and had
come down unexpectedly, with the intention to all
appearance of making a raid either across the river or
down stream. Evidently the appetite for more ivory
had got the better of the -- what shall I say? -- less
material aspirations. However he had got much worse
suddenly. 'I heard he was lying helpless, and so I
came up -- took my chance,' said the Russian. 'Oh, he
is bad, very bad.' I directed my glass to the house.
There were no signs of life, but there was the ruined
roof, the long mud wall peeping above the grass,
with three little square window-holes, no two of the
same size; all this brought within reach of my hand,
as it were. And then I made a brusque movement, and
one of the remaining posts of that vanished fence
leaped up in the field of my glass. You remember I
told you I had been struck at the distance by certain
attempts at ornamentation, rather remarkable in the
ruinous aspect of the place. Now I had suddenly a
nearer view, and its first result was to make me throw
my head back as if before a blow. Then I went care-
fully from post to post with my glass, and I saw my
mistake. These round knobs were not ornamental but
symbolic; they were expressive and puzzling, striking
and disturbing -- food for thought and also for vul-
tures if there had been any looking down from the
sky; but at all events for such ants as were industrious
enough to ascend the pole. They would have been
even more impressive, those heads on the stakes, if
their faces had not been turned to the house. Only
one, the first I had made out, was facing my way. I
was not so shocked as you may think. The start back
I had given was really nothing but a movement of
surprise. I had expected to see a knob of wood there,
you know. I returned deliberately to the first I had
seen -- and there it was, black, dried, sunken, with
dosed eyelids -- a head that seemed to sleep at the top
of that pole, and, with the shrunken dry lips showing
a narrow white line of the teeth, was smiling, too,
smiling continuously at some endless and jocose
dream of that eternal slumber.
"I am not disclosing any trade secrets. In fact, the
manager said afterwards that Mr. Kurtz's methods
had ruined the district. I have no opinion on that
point, but I want you clearly to understand that there
was nothing exactly profitable in these heads being
there. They only showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked re-
straint in the gratification of his various lusts, that
there was something wanting in him -- some small
matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not
be found under his magnificent eloquence. Whether
he knew of his deficiency himself I can't say. I think
the knowledge came to him at last -- only at the very
last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and
had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic
invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about
himself which he did not know, things of which he
had no conception till he took counsel with this great
solitude -- and the whisper had proved irresistibly fas-
cinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was
hollow at the core.... I put down the glass, and
the head that had appeared near enough to be spoken
to seemed at once to have leaped away from me into
inaccessible distance.
"The admirer of Mr. Kurtz was a bit crestfallen. In
a hurried, indistinct voice he began to assure me he had
not dared to take these -- say, symbols -- down. He was
not afraid of the natives; they would not stir till Mr.
Kurtz gave the word. His ascendancy was extraor-
dinary. The camps of the people surrounded the
place, and the chiefs came every day to see him. They
would crawl.... 'I don't want to know anything of
the ceremonies used when approaching Mr. Kurtz,'
I shouted. Curious, this feeling that came over me
that such details would be more intolerable than
those heads drying on the stakes under Mr. Kurtz's
windows. After a]l, that was only a savage sight, while
I seemed at one bound to have been transported into
some lightless region of subtle horrors, where pure,
Heart of Darkness Page 9
