Heart of Darkness
accordance with some farcical law or other made down the river, it
didn’t enter anybody’s head to trouble how they would live. Certainly
they had brought with them some rotten hippo-meat, which couldn’t have
lasted very long, anyway, even if the pilgrims hadn’t, in the midst of
a shocking hullabaloo, thrown a considerable quantity of it overboard.
It looked like a high-handed proceeding; but it was really a case of
legitimate self-defence. You can’t breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping,
and eating, and at the same time keep your precarious grip on
existence. Besides that, they had given them every week three pieces of
brass wire, each about nine inches long; and the theory was they were
to buy their provisions with that currency in riverside villages. You
can see how _that_ worked. There were either no villages, or the people
were hostile, or the director, who like the rest of us fed out of tins,
with an occasional old he-goat thrown in, didn’t want to stop the
steamer for some more or less recondite reason. So, unless they
swallowed the wire itself, or made loops of it to snare the fishes
with, I don’t see what good their extravagant salary could be to them.
I must say it was paid with a regularity worthy of a large and
honourable trading company. For the rest, the only thing to eat—though
it didn’t look eatable in the least—I saw in their possession was a few
lumps of some stuff like half-cooked dough, of a dirty lavender colour,
they kept wrapped in leaves, and now and then swallowed a piece of, but
so small that it seemed done more for the looks of the thing than for
any serious purpose of sustenance. Why in the name of all the gnawing
devils of hunger they didn’t go for us—they were thirty to five—and
have a good tuck-in for once, amazes me now when I think of it. They
were big powerful men, with not much capacity to weigh the
consequences, with courage, with strength, even yet, though their skins
were no longer glossy and their muscles no longer hard. And I saw that
something restraining, one of those human secrets that baffle
probability, had come into play there. I looked at them with a swift
quickening of interest—not because it occurred to me I might be eaten
by them before very long, though I own to you that just then I
perceived—in a new light, as it were—how unwholesome the pilgrims
looked, and I hoped, yes, I positively hoped, that my aspect was not
so—what shall I say?—so—unappetizing: a touch of fantastic vanity which
fitted well with the dream-sensation that pervaded all my days at that
time. Perhaps I had a little fever, too. One can’t live with one’s
finger everlastingly on one’s pulse. I had often ‘a little fever,’ or a
little touch of other things—the playful paw-strokes of the wilderness,
the preliminary trifling before the more serious onslaught which came
in due course. Yes; I looked at them as you would on any human being,
with a curiosity of their impulses, motives, capacities, weaknesses,
when brought to the test of an inexorable physical necessity.
Restraint! What possible restraint? Was it superstition, disgust,
patience, fear—or some kind of primitive honour? No fear can stand up
to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist
where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call
principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze. Don’t you know the
devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating torment, its black
thoughts, its sombre and brooding ferocity? Well, I do. It takes a man
all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly. It’s really easier to
face bereavement, dishonour, and the perdition of one’s soul—than this
kind of prolonged hunger. Sad, but true. And these chaps, too, had no
earthly reason for any kind of scruple. Restraint! I would just as soon
have expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the corpses of a
battlefield. But there was the fact facing me—the fact dazzling, to be
seen, like the foam on the depths of the sea, like a ripple on an
unfathomable enigma, a mystery greater—when I thought of it—than the
curious, inexplicable note of desperate grief in this savage clamour
that had swept by us on the river-bank, behind the blind whiteness of
the fog.
“Two pilgrims were quarrelling in hurried whispers as to which bank.
‘Left.’ ‘no, no; how can you? Right, right, of course.’ ‘It is very
serious,’ said the manager’s voice behind me; ‘I would be desolated if
anything should happen to Mr. Kurtz before we came up.’ I looked at
him, and had not the slightest doubt he was sincere. He was just the
kind of man who would wish to preserve appearances. That was his
restraint. But when he muttered something about going on at once, I did
not even take the trouble to answer him. I knew, and he knew, that it
was impossible. Were we to let go our hold of the bottom, we would be
absolutely in the air—in space. We wouldn’t be able to tell where we
were going to—whether up or down stream, or across—till we fetched
against one bank or the other—and then we wouldn’t know at first which
it was. Of course I made no move. I had no mind for a smash-up. You
couldn’t imagine a more deadly place for a shipwreck. Whether we
drowned at once or not, we were sure to perish speedily in one way or
another. ‘I authorize you to take all the risks,’ he said, after a
short silence. ‘I refuse to take any,’ I said shortly; which was just
the answer he expected, though its tone might have surprised him.
‘Well, I must defer to your judgment. You are captain,’ he said with
marked civility. I turned my shoulder to him in sign of my
appreciation, and looked into the fog. How long would it last? It was
the most hopeless lookout. The approach to this Kurtz grubbing for
ivory in the wretched bush was beset by as many dangers as though he
had been an enchanted princess sleeping in a fabulous castle. ‘Will
they attack, do you think?’ asked the manager, in a confidential tone.
“I did not think they would attack, for several obvious reasons. The
thick fog was one. If they left the bank in their canoes they would get
lost in it, as we would be if we attempted to move. Still, I had also
judged the jungle of both banks quite impenetrable—and yet eyes were in
it, eyes that had seen us. The riverside bushes were certainly very
thick; but the undergrowth behind was evidently penetrable. However,
during the short lift I had seen no canoes anywhere in the
reach—certainly not abreast of the steamer. But what made the idea of
attack inconceivable to me was the nature of the noise—of the cries we
had heard. They had not the fierce character boding immediate hostile
intention. Unexpected, wild, and violent as they had been, they had
given me an irresistible impression of sorrow. The glimpse of the
steamboat had for some reason filled those savages with unrestrained
grief. The danger, if any, I expounded, was from our proximity to a
great human passion let loose. Even extreme grief may ultimately vent
itself in violence—but more generally takes the form of apathy....
“You should have seen the pilgrims stare! They had no heart to grin, or
even to revile me: but I believe they thought me gone mad—with fright,
maybe. I delivered a regular lecture. My dear boys, it was no good
bothering. Keep a lookout? Well, you may guess I watched the fog for
the signs of lifting as a cat watches a mouse; but for anything else
our eyes were of no more use to us than if we had been buried miles
deep in a heap of cotton-wool. It felt like it, too—choking, warm,
stifling. Besides, all I said, though it sounded extravagant, was
absolutely true to fact. What we afterwards alluded to as an attack was
really an attempt at repulse. The action was very far from being
aggressive—it was not even defensive, in the usual sense: it was
undertaken under the stress of desperation, and in its essence was
purely protective.
“It developed itself, I should say, two hours after the fog lifted, and
its commencement was at a spot, roughly speaking, about a mile and a
half below Kurtz’s station. We had just floundered and flopped round a
bend, when I saw an islet, a mere grassy hummock of bright green, in
the middle of the stream. It was the only thing of the kind; but as we
opened the reach more, I perceived it was the head of a long sand-bank,
or rather of a chain of shallow patches stretching down the middle of
the river. They were discoloured, just awash, and the whole lot was
seen just under the water, exactly as a man’s backbone is seen running
down the middle of his back under the skin. Now, as far as I did see, I
could go to the right or to the left of this. I didn’t know either
channel, of course. The banks looked pretty well alike, the depth
appeared the same; but as I had been informed the station was on the
west side, I naturally headed for the western passage.
“No sooner had we fairly entered it than I became aware it was much
narrower than I had supposed. To the left of us there was the long
uninterrupted shoal, and to the right a high, steep bank heavily
overgrown with bushes. Above the bush the trees stood in serried ranks.
The twigs overhung the current thickly, and from distance to distance a
large limb of some tree projected rigidly over the stream. It was then
well on in the afternoon, the face of the forest was gloomy, and a
broad strip of shadow had already fallen on the water. In this shadow
we steamed up—very slowly, as you may imagine. I sheered her well
inshore—the water being deepest near the bank, as the sounding-pole
informed me.
“One of my hungry and forbearing friends was sounding in the bows just
below me. This steamboat was exactly like a decked scow. On the deck,
there were two little teakwood houses, with doors and windows. The
boiler was in the fore-end, and the machinery right astern. Over the
whole there was a light roof, supported on stanchions. The funnel
projected through that roof, and in front of the funnel a small cabin
built of light planks served for a pilot-house. It contained a couch,
two camp-stools, a loaded Martini-Henry leaning in one corner, a tiny
table, and the steering-wheel. It had a wide door in front and a broad
shutter at each side. All these were always thrown open, of course. I
spent my days perched up there on the extreme fore-end of that roof,
before the door. At night I slept, or tried to, on the couch. An
athletic black belonging to some coast tribe and educated by my poor
predecessor, was the helmsman. He sported a pair of brass earrings,
wore a blue cloth wrapper from the waist to the ankles, and thought all
the world of himself. He was the most unstable kind of fool I had ever
seen. He steered with no end of a swagger while you were by; but if he
lost sight of you, he became instantly the prey of an abject funk, and
would let that cripple of a steamboat get the upper hand of him in a
minute.
“I was looking down at the sounding-pole, and feeling much annoyed to
see at each try a little more of it stick out of that river, when I saw
my poleman give up on the business suddenly, and stretch himself flat
on the deck, without even taking the trouble to haul his pole in. He
kept hold on it though, and it trailed in the water. At the same time
the fireman, whom I could also see below me, sat down abruptly before
his furnace and ducked his head. I was amazed. Then I had to look at
the river mighty quick, because there was a snag in the fairway.
Sticks, little sticks, were flying about—thick: they were whizzing
before my nose, dropping below me, striking behind me against my
pilot-house. All this time the river, the shore, the woods, were very
quiet—perfectly quiet. I could only hear the heavy splashing thump of
the stern-wheel and the patter of these things. We cleared the snag