Heart of Darkness
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 delicately 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 business. And that’s difficult enough. Mind, I
am not trying to excuse or even explain—I am trying to account 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 guidance. 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 understand?—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 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 honour; 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
profundity 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 desperately. 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 pyjamas showing himself a
hopeless duffer at the business.
“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 confidentially 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 interspersed with rare
trees and perfectly free from undergrowth. 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 the woods made a
background. There was no enclosure 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 disappeared. 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 cart-wheel 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 attacked,’ 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