Heart of Darkness
hook or by crook. There was surface-truth enough in these things to
save a wiser man. And between whiles I had to look after the savage who
was fireman. He was an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical
boiler. He was there below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as
edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat,
walking on his hind-legs. A few months of training had done for that
really fine chap. He squinted at the steam-gauge and at the water-gauge
with an evident effort of intrepidity—and he had filed teeth, too, the
poor devil, and the wool of his pate shaved into queer patterns, and
three ornamental scars on each of his cheeks. He ought to have been
clapping his hands and stamping his feet on the bank, instead of which
he was hard at work, a thrall to strange witchcraft, full of improving
knowledge. He was useful because he had been instructed; and what he
knew was this—that should the water in that transparent thing
disappear, the evil spirit inside the boiler would get angry through
the greatness of his thirst, and take a terrible vengeance. So he
sweated and fired up and watched the glass fearfully (with an impromptu
charm, made of rags, tied to his arm, and a piece of polished bone, as
big as a watch, stuck flatways through his lower lip), while the wooded
banks slipped past us slowly, the short noise was left behind, the
interminable miles of silence—and we crept on, towards Kurtz. But the
snags were thick, the water was treacherous and shallow, the boiler
seemed indeed to have a sulky devil in it, and thus neither that
fireman nor I had any time to peer into our creepy thoughts.
“Some fifty miles below the Inner Station we came upon a hut of reeds,
an inclined and melancholy pole, with the unrecognizable tatters of
what had been a flag of some sort flying from it, and a neatly stacked
wood-pile. This was unexpected. We came to the bank, and on the stack
of firewood found a flat piece of board with some faded pencil-writing
on it. When deciphered it said: ‘Wood for you. Hurry up. Approach
cautiously.’ There was a signature, but it was illegible—not Kurtz—a
much longer word. ‘Hurry up.’ Where? Up the river? ‘Approach
cautiously.’ We had not done so. But the warning could not have been
meant for the place where it could be only found after approach.
Something was wrong above. But what—and how much? That was the
question. We commented adversely upon the imbecility of that
telegraphic style. The bush around said nothing, and would not let us
look very far, either. A torn curtain of red twill hung in the doorway
of the hut, and flapped sadly in our faces. The dwelling was
dismantled; but we could see a white man had lived there not very long
ago. There remained a rude table—a plank on two posts; a heap of
rubbish reposed in a dark corner, and by the door I picked up a book.
It had lost its covers, and the pages had been thumbed into a state of
extremely dirty softness; but the back had been lovingly stitched
afresh with white cotton thread, which looked clean yet. It was an
extraordinary find. Its title was, _An Inquiry into some Points of
Seamanship_, by a man Towser, Towson—some such name—Master in his
Majesty’s Navy. The matter looked dreary reading enough, with
illustrative diagrams and repulsive tables of figures, and the copy was
sixty years old. I handled this amazing antiquity with the greatest
possible tenderness, lest it should dissolve in my hands. Within,
Towson or Towser was inquiring earnestly into the breaking strain of
ships’ chains and tackle, and other such matters. Not a very
enthralling book; but at the first glance you could see there a
singleness of intention, an honest concern for the right way of going
to work, which made these humble pages, thought out so many years ago,
luminous with another than a professional light. The simple old sailor,
with his talk of chains and purchases, made me forget the jungle and
the pilgrims in a delicious sensation of having come upon something
unmistakably real. Such a book being there was wonderful enough; but
still more astounding were the notes pencilled in the margin, and
plainly referring to the text. I couldn’t believe my eyes! They were in
cipher! Yes, it looked like cipher. Fancy a man lugging with him a book
of that description into this nowhere and studying it—and making
notes—in cipher at that! It was an extravagant mystery.
“I had been dimly aware for some time of a worrying noise, and when I
lifted my eyes I saw the wood-pile was gone, and the manager, aided by
all the pilgrims, was shouting at me from the riverside. I slipped the
book into my pocket. I assure you to leave off reading was like tearing
myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship.
“I started the lame engine ahead. ‘It must be this miserable
trader—this intruder,’ exclaimed the manager, looking back malevolently
at the place we had left. ‘He must be English,’ I said. ‘It will not
save him from getting into trouble if he is not careful,’ muttered the
manager darkly. I observed with assumed innocence that no man was safe
from trouble in this world.
“The current was more rapid now, the steamer seemed at her last gasp,
the stern-wheel flopped languidly, and I caught myself listening on
tiptoe for the next beat of the boat, for in sober truth I expected the
wretched thing to give up every moment. It was like watching the last
flickers of a life. But still we crawled. Sometimes I would pick out a
tree a little way ahead to measure our progress towards Kurtz by, but I
lost it invariably before we got abreast. To keep the eyes so long on
one thing was too much for human patience. The manager displayed a
beautiful resignation. I fretted and fumed and took to arguing with
myself whether or no I would talk openly with Kurtz; but before I could
come to any conclusion it occurred to me that my speech or my silence,
indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility. What did it matter
what any one knew or ignored? What did it matter who was manager? One
gets sometimes such a flash of insight. The essentials of this affair
lay deep under the surface, beyond my reach, and beyond my power of
meddling.
“Towards the evening of the second day we judged ourselves about eight
miles from Kurtz’s station. I wanted to push on; but the manager looked
grave, and told me the navigation up there was so dangerous that it
would be advisable, the sun being very low already, to wait where we
were till next morning. Moreover, he pointed out that if the warning to
approach cautiously were to be followed, we must approach in
daylight—not at dusk or in the dark. This was sensible enough. Eight
miles meant nearly three hours’ steaming for us, and I could also see
suspicious ripples at the upper end of the reach. Nevertheless, I was
annoyed beyond expression at the delay, and most unreasonably, too,
since one night more could not matter much after so many months. As we
had plenty of wood, and caution was the word, I brought up in the
middle of the stream. The reach was narrow, straight, with high sides
like a railway cutting. The dusk came gliding into it long before the
sun had set. The current ran smooth and swift, but a dumb immobility
sat on the banks. The living trees, lashed together by the creepers and
every living bush of the undergrowth, might have been changed into
stone, even to the slenderest twig, to the lightest leaf. It was not
sleep—it seemed unnatural, like a state of trance. Not the faintest
sound of any kind could be heard. You looked on amazed, and began to
suspect yourself of being deaf—then the night came suddenly, and struck
you blind as well. About three in the morning some large fish leaped,
and the loud splash made me jump as though a gun had been fired. When
the sun rose there was a white fog, very warm and clammy, and more
blinding than the night. It did not shift or drive; it was just there,
standing all round you like something solid. At eight or nine, perhaps,
it lifted as a shutter lifts. We had a glimpse of the towering
multitude of trees, of the immense matted jungle, with the blazing
little ball of the sun hanging over it—all perfectly still—and then the
white shutter came down again, smoothly, as if sliding in greased
grooves. I ordered the chain, which we had begun to heave in, to be
paid out again. Before it stopped running with a muffled rattle, a cry,
a very loud cry, as of infinite desolation, soared slowly in the opaque
air. It ceased. A complaining clamour, modulated in savage discords,
filled our ears. The sheer unexpectedness of it made my hair stir under
my cap. I don’t know how it struck the others: to me it seemed as
though the mist itself had screamed, so suddenly, and apparently from
all sides at once, did this tumultuous and mournful uproar arise. It
culminated in a hurried outbreak of almost intolerably excessive
shrieking, which stopped short, leaving us stiffened in a variety of
silly attitudes, and obstinately listening to the nearly as appalling
and excessive silence. ‘Good God! What is the meaning—’ stammered at my
elbow one of the pilgrims—a little fat man, with sandy hair and red
whiskers, who wore sidespring boots, and pink pyjamas tucked into his
socks. Two others remained open-mouthed a whole minute, then dashed
into the little cabin, to rush out incontinently and stand darting
scared glances, with Winchesters at ‘ready’ in their hands. What we
could see was just the steamer we were on, her outlines blurred as
though she had been on the point of dissolving, and a misty strip of
water, perhaps two feet broad, around her—and that was all. The rest of
the world was nowhere, as far as our eyes and ears were concerned. Just
nowhere. Gone, disappeared; swept off without leaving a whisper or a
shadow behind.
“I went forward, and ordered the chain to be hauled in short, so as to
be ready to trip the anchor and move the steamboat at once if
necessary. ‘Will they attack?’ whispered an awed voice. ‘We will be all
butchered in this fog,’ murmured another. The faces twitched with the
strain, the hands trembled slightly, the eyes forgot to wink. It was
very curious to see the contrast of expressions of the white men and of
the black fellows of our crew, who were as much strangers to that part
of the river as we, though their homes were only eight hundred miles
away. The whites, of course greatly discomposed, had besides a curious
look of being painfully shocked by such an outrageous row. The others
had an alert, naturally interested expression; but their faces were
essentially quiet, even those of the one or two who grinned as they
hauled at the chain. Several exchanged short, grunting phrases, which
seemed to settle the matter to their satisfaction. Their headman, a
young, broad-chested black, severely draped in dark-blue fringed
cloths, with fierce nostrils and his hair all done up artfully in oily
ringlets, stood near me. ‘Aha!’ I said, just for good fellowship’s
sake. ‘Catch ’im,’ he snapped, with a bloodshot widening of his eyes
and a flash of sharp teeth—‘catch ’im. Give ’im to us.’ ‘To you, eh?’ I
asked; ‘what would you do with them?’ ‘Eat ’im!’ he said curtly, and,
leaning his elbow on the rail, looked out into the fog in a dignified
and profoundly pensive attitude. I would no doubt have been properly
horrified, had it not occurred to me that he and his chaps must be very
hungry: that they must have been growing increasingly hungry for at
least this month past. They had been engaged for six months (I don’t
think a single one of them had any clear idea of time, as we at the end
of countless ages have. They still belonged to the beginnings of
time—had no inherited experience to teach them as it were), and of
course, as long as there was a piece of paper written over in