No More Learning

Its light was dim, and a heavy writing-desk squatted in
the middle. From behind that structure came out an impression of pale
plumpness in a frock-coat. The great man himself. He was five feet
six, I should judge, and had his grip on the handle-end of ever so many
millions. He shook hands, I fancy, murmured vaguely, was satisfied with
my French. Bon voyage.

"In about forty-five seconds I found myself again in the waiting-room
with the compassionate secretary, who, full of desolation and sympathy,
made me sign some document. I believe I undertook amongst other things
not to disclose any trade secrets. Well, I am not going to.

"I began to feel slightly uneasy. You know I am not used to such
ceremonies, and there was something ominous in the atmosphere. It
was just as though I had been let into some conspiracy--I don't
know--something not quite right; and I was glad to get out. In the outer
room the two women knitted black wool feverishly. People were arriving,
and the younger one was walking back and forth introducing them. The
old one sat on her chair. Her flat cloth slippers were propped up on
a foot-warmer, and a cat reposed on her lap. She wore a starched
white affair on her head, had a wart on one cheek, and silver-rimmed
spectacles hung on the tip of her nose. She glanced at me above the
glasses. The swift and indifferent placidity of that look troubled me.
Two youths with foolish and cheery countenances were being piloted over,
and she threw at them the same quick glance of unconcerned wisdom. She
seemed to know all about them and about me too. An eerie feeling came
over me. She seemed uncanny and fateful. Often far away there I thought
of these two, guarding the door of Darkness, knitting black wool as for
a warm pall, one introducing, introducing continuously to the unknown,
the other scrutinizing the cheery and foolish faces with unconcerned old
eyes. Ave! Old knitter of black wool. Morituri te salutant. Not many of
those she looked at ever saw her again--not half, by a long way.

"There was yet a visit to the doctor. 'A simple formality,' assured me
the secretary, with an air of taking an immense part in all my sorrows.
Accordingly a young chap wearing his hat over the left eyebrow, some
clerk I suppose,--there must have been clerks in the business, though
the house was as still as a house in a city of the dead,--came from
somewhere up-stairs, and led me forth. He was shabby and careless, with
ink-stains on the sleeves of his jacket, and his cravat was large and
billowy, under a chin shaped like the toe of an old boot. It was a
little too early for the doctor, so I proposed a drink, and thereupon he
developed a vein of joviality. As we sat over our vermouths he glorified
the Company's business, and by-and-by I expressed casually my surprise
at him not going out there. He became very cool and collected all at
once. 'I am not such a fool as I look, quoth Plato to his disciples,'
he said sententiously, emptied his glass with great resolution, and we
rose.

"The old doctor felt my pulse, evidently thinking of something else
the while. 'Good, good for there,' he mumbled, and then with a certain
eagerness asked me whether I would let him measure my head. Rather
surprised, I said Yes, when he produced a thing like calipers and got
the dimensions back and front and every way, taking notes carefully. He
was an unshaven little man in a threadbare coat like a gaberdine, with
his feet in slippers, and I thought him a harmless fool. 'I always ask
leave, in the interests of science, to measure the crania of those going
out there,' he said. 'And when they come back, too? ' I asked. 'Oh, I
never see them,' he remarked; 'and, moreover, the changes take place
inside, you know. ' He smiled, as if at some quiet joke. 'So you are
going out there. Famous. Interesting too. ' He gave me a searching
glance, and made another note. 'Ever any madness in your family? ' he
asked, in a matter-of-fact tone. I felt very annoyed. 'Is that question
in the interests of science too? ' 'It would be,' he said, without taking
notice of my irritation, 'interesting for science to watch the mental
changes of individuals, on the spot, but . . . ' 'Are you an alienist? ' I
interrupted. 'Every doctor should be--a little,' answered that original,
imperturbably. 'I have a little theory which you Messieurs who go out
there must help me to prove. This is my share in the advantages my
country shall reap from the possession of such a magnificent dependency.
The mere wealth I leave to others. Pardon my questions, but you are
the first Englishman coming under my observation. . . . ' I hastened
to assure him I was not in the least typical. 'If I were,' said I,
'I wouldn't be talking like this with you. ' 'What you say is rather
profound, and probably erroneous,' he said, with a laugh. 'Avoid
irritation more than exposure to the sun. Adieu. How do you English
say, eh? Good-by. Ah! Good-by. Adieu. In the tropics one must before
everything keep calm. ' . . . He lifted a warning forefinger. . . . 'Du
calme, du calme. Adieu. '

"One thing more remained to do--say good-by to my excellent aunt. I
found her triumphant. I had a cup of tea--the last decent cup of tea for
many days--and in a room that most soothingly looked just as you would
expect a lady's drawing-room to look, we had a long quiet chat by the
fireside. In the course of these confidences it became quite plain to me
I had been represented to the wife of the high dignitary, and goodness
knows to how many more people besides, as an exceptional and gifted
creature--a piece of good fortune for the Company--a man you don't get
hold of every day. Good heavens! and I was going to take charge of a
two-penny-halfpenny river-steamboat with a penny whistle attached! It
appeared, however, I was also one of the Workers, with a capital--you
know. Something like an emissary of light, something like a lower sort
of apostle. There had been a lot of such rot let loose in print and talk
just about that time, and the excellent woman, living right in the rush
of all that humbug, got carried off her feet. She talked about 'weaning
those ignorant millions from their horrid ways,' till, upon my word, she
made me quite uncomfortable. I ventured to hint that the Company was run
for profit.

"'You forget, dear Charlie, that the laborer is worthy of his hire,' she
said, brightly. It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They
live in a world of their own, and there had never been anything like it,
and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to
set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded
fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of
creation would start up and knock the whole thing over.

"After this I got embraced, told to wear flannel, be sure to write
often, and so on--and I left. In the street--I don't know why--a queer
feeling came to me that I was an impostor. Odd thing that I, who used to
clear out for any part of the world at twenty-four hours' notice, with
less thought than most men give to the crossing of a street, had a
moment--I won't say of hesitation, but of startled pause, before this
commonplace affair. The best way I can explain it to you is by saying
that, for a second or two, I felt as though, instead of going to the
center of a continent, I were about to set off for the center of the
earth.

"I left in a French steamer, and she called in every blamed port they
have out there, for, as far as I could see, the sole purpose of landing
soldiers and custom-house officers. I watched the coast. Watching a
coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There
it is before you--smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or
savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, 'Come and find out. '
This one was almost featureless, as if still in the making, with
an aspect of monotonous grimness. The edge of a colossal jungle, so
dark-green as to be almost black, fringed with white surf, ran straight,
like a ruled line, far, far away along a blue sea whose glitter was
blurred by a creeping mist. The sun was fierce, the land seemed to
glisten and drip with steam. Here and there grayish-whitish specks
showed up, clustered inside the white surf, with a flag flying above
them perhaps. Settlements some centuries old, and still no bigger than
pin-heads on the untouched expanse of their background. We pounded
along, stopped, landed soldiers; went on, landed custom-house clerks to
levy toll in what looked like a God-forsaken wilderness, with a tin shed
and a flag-pole lost in it; landed more soldiers--to take care of the
custom-house clerks, presumably. Some, I heard, got drowned in the surf;
but whether they did or not, nobody seemed particularly to care. They
were just flung out there, and on we went. Every day the coast
looked the same, as though we had not moved; but we passed various
places--trading places--with names like Gran' Bassam Little Popo, names
that seemed to belong to some sordid farce acted in front of a sinister
backcloth. The idleness of a passenger, my isolation amongst all these
men with whom I had no point of contact, the oily and languid sea, the
uniform somberness of the coast, seemed to keep me away from the truth
of things, within the toil of a mournful and senseless delusion. The
voice of the surf heard now and then was a positive pleasure, like the
speech of a brother. It was something natural, that had its reason, that
had a meaning. Now and then a boat from the shore gave one a momentary
contact with reality. It was paddled by black fellows. You could see
from afar the white of their eyeballs glistening. They shouted, sang;
their bodies streamed with perspiration; they had faces like grotesque
masks--these chaps; but they had bone, muscle, a wild vitality, an
intense energy of movement, that was as natural and true as the surf
along their coast. They wanted no excuse for being there. They were a
great comfort to look at. For a time I would feel I belonged still to
a world of straightforward facts; but the feeling would not last long.
Something would turn up to scare it away. Once, I remember, we came upon
a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn't even a shed there, and
she was shelling the bush. It appears the French had one of their wars
going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles
of the long eight-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy,
slimy swell swung her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin
masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was,
incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the
eight-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little
white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble
screech--and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch
of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the
sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me
earnestly there was a camp of natives--he called them enemies! --hidden
out of sight somewhere.

"We gave her her letters (I heard the men in that lonely ship were dying
of fever at the rate of three a day) and went on. We called at some more
places with farcical names, where the merry dance of death and trade
goes on in a still and earthy atmosphere as of an overheated catacomb;
all along the formless coast bordered by dangerous surf, as if Nature
herself had tried to ward off intruders; in and out of rivers, streams
of death in life, whose banks were rotting into mud, whose waters,
thickened into slime, invaded the contorted mangroves, that seemed to
writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair. Nowhere did we
stop long enough to get a particularized impression, but the general
sense of vague and oppressive wonder grew upon me. It was like a weary
pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares.

"It was upward of thirty days before I saw the mouth of the big river.
We anchored off the seat of the government. But my work would not begin
till some two hundred miles farther on. So as soon as I could I made a
start for a place thirty miles higher up.

"I had my passage on a little sea-going steamer. Her captain was a
Swede, and knowing me for a seaman, invited me on the bridge. He was a
young man, lean, fair, and morose, with lanky hair and a shuffling gait.
As we left the miserable little wharf, he tossed his head contemptuously
at the shore. 'Been living there? ' he asked. I said, 'Yes. ' 'Fine lot
these government chaps--are they not? ' he went on, speaking English
with great precision and considerable bitterness. 'It is funny what some
people will do for a few francs a month. I wonder what becomes of that
kind when it goes up country? ' I said to him I expected to see that
soon. 'So-o-o! ' he exclaimed. He shuffled athwart, keeping one eye ahead
vigilantly. 'Don't be too sure,' he continued. 'The other day I took
up a man who hanged himself on the road. He was a Swede, too. '
'Hanged himself! Why, in God's name? ' I cried. He kept on looking
out watchfully. 'Who knows? The sun too much for him, or the country
perhaps. '

"At last we opened a reach. A rocky cliff appeared, mounds of turned-up
earth by the shore, houses on a hill, others, with iron roofs, amongst a
waste of excavations, or hanging to the declivity. A continuous noise of
the rapids above hovered over this scene of inhabited devastation. A
lot of people, mostly black and naked, moved about like ants. A jetty
projected into the river. A blinding sunlight drowned all this at times
in a sudden recrudescence of glare. 'There's your Company's station,'
said the Swede, pointing to three wooden barrack-like structures on the
rocky slope. 'I will send your things up. Four boxes did you say? So.
Farewell. '

"I came upon a boiler wallowing in the grass, then found a path
leading up the hill. It turned aside for the bowlders, and also for an
undersized railway-truck lying there on its back with its wheels in
the air. One was off. The thing looked as dead as the carcass of some
animal. I came upon more pieces of decaying machinery, a stack of rusty
rails. To the left a clump of trees made a shady spot, where dark things
seemed to stir feebly. I blinked, the path was steep. A horn tooted to
the right, and I saw the black people run. A heavy and dull detonation
shook the ground, a puff of smoke came out of the cliff, and that was
all. No change appeared on the face of the rock. They were building a
railway. The cliff was not in the way or anything; but this objectless
blasting was all the work going on.

"A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men
advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow,
balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept
time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, and
the short ends behind wagged to and fro like tails. I could see every
rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an
iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain
whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking. Another report
from the cliff made me think suddenly of that ship of war I had seen
firing into a continent.
It was the same kind of ominous voice; but
these men could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies. They
were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting shells,
had come to them, an insoluble mystery from over the sea. All their
meager breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered,
the eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me within six inches,
without a glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy
savages. Behind this raw matter one of the reclaimed, the product of
the new forces at work, strolled despondently, carrying a rifle by its
middle. He had a uniform jacket with one button off, and seeing a white
man on the path, hoisted his weapon to his shoulder with alacrity. This
was simple prudence, white men being so much alike at a distance that
he could not tell who I might be. He was speedily reassured, and with a
large, white, rascally grin, and a glance at his charge, seemed to take
me into partnership in his exalted trust. After all, I also was a part
of the great cause of these high and just proceedings.

"Instead of going up, I turned and descended to the left. My idea was to
let that chain-gang get out of sight before I climbed the hill. You know
I am not particularly tender; I've had to strike and to fend off.
I've had to resist and to attack sometimes--that's only one way of
resisting--without counting the exact cost, according to the demands
of such sort of life as I had blundered into. I've seen the devil of
violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by
all the stars! these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed
and drove men--men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside, I
foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become
acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and
pitiless folly. How insidious he could be, too, I was only to find out
several months later and a thousand miles farther. For a moment I
stood appalled, as though by a warning. Finally I descended the hill,
obliquely, towards the trees I had seen.

"I avoided a vast artificial hole somebody had been digging on the
slope, the purpose of which I found it impossible to divine. It wasn't
a quarry or a sandpit, anyhow. It was just a hole. It might have
been connected with the philanthropic desire of giving the criminals
something to do. I don't know. Then I nearly fell into a very narrow
ravine, almost no more than a scar in the hillside. I discovered that
a lot of imported drainage-pipes for the settlement had been tumbled in
there. There wasn't one that was not broken. It was a wanton smash-up.
At last I got under the trees. My purpose was to stroll into the shade
for a moment; but no sooner within than it seemed to me I had stepped
into a gloomy circle of some Inferno. The rapids were near, and an
uninterrupted, uniform, headlong, rushing noise filled the mournful
stillness of the grove, where not a breath stirred, not a leaf moved,
with a mysterious sound--as though the tearing pace of the launched
earth had suddenly become audible.

"Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees, leaning against the
trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within
the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair.
Another mine on the cliff went off, followed by a slight shudder of the
soil under my feet. The work was going on. The work! And this was the
place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die.

"They were dying slowly--it was very clear. They were not enemies, they
were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now,--nothing but black
shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish
gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality
of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar
food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl
away and rest. These moribund shapes were free as air--and nearly as
thin. I began to distinguish the gleam of eyes under the trees. Then,
glancing down, I saw a face near my hand. The black bones reclined at
full length with one shoulder against the tree, and slowly the eyelids
rose and the sunken eyes looked up at me, enormous and vacant, a kind of
blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs, which died out slowly.
The man seemed young--almost a boy--but you know with them it's hard to
tell. I found nothing else to do but to offer him one of my good Swede's
ship's biscuits I had in my pocket. The fingers closed slowly on it and
held--there was no other movement and no other glance. He had tied a
bit of white worsted round his neck--Why? Where did he get it? Was it a
badge--an ornament--a charm--a propitiatory act? Was there any idea at
all connected with it? It looked startling round his black neck, this
bit of white thread from beyond the seas.

"Near the same tree two more bundles of acute angles sat with their legs
drawn up. One, with his chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing,
in an intolerable and appalling manner: his brother phantom rested its
forehead, as if overcome with a great weariness; and all about others
were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture
of a massacre or a pestilence. While I stood horror-struck, one of these
creatures rose to his hands and knees, and went off on all-fours towards
the river to drink. He lapped out of his hand, then sat up in the
sunlight, crossing his shins in front of him, and after a time let his
woolly head fall on his breastbone.

"I didn't want any more loitering in the shade, and I made haste towards
the station. When near the buildings I met a white man, in such an
unexpected elegance of get-up that in the first moment I took him for
a sort of vision. I saw a high starched collar, white cuffs, a light
alpaca jacket, snowy trousers, a clear necktie, and varnished boots. No
hat. Hair parted, brushed, oiled, under a green-lined parasol held in a
big white hand. He was amazing, and had a penholder behind his ear.

"I shook hands with this miracle, and I learned he was the Company's
chief accountant, and that all the bookkeeping was done at this station.
He had come out for a moment, he said, 'to get a breath of fresh air. '
The expression sounded wonderfully odd, with its suggestion of sedentary
desk-life. I wouldn't have mentioned the fellow to you at all, only
it was from his lips that I first heard the name of the man who is
so indissolubly connected with the memories of that time. Moreover, I
respected the fellow. Yes; I respected his collars, his vast cuffs,
his brushed hair. His appearance was certainly that of a hairdresser's
dummy; but in the great demoralization of the land he kept up
his appearance. That's backbone. His starched collars and got-up
shirt-fronts were achievements of character. He had been out nearly
three years; and, later on, I could not help asking him how he managed
to sport such linen. He had just the faintest blush, and said modestly,
'I've been teaching one of the native women about the station. It
was difficult. She had a distaste for the work. ' This man had verily
accomplished something. And he was devoted to his books, which were in
apple-pie order.

"Everything else in the station was in a muddle,--heads, things,
buildings. Strings of dusty niggers with splay feet arrived and
departed; a stream of manufactured goods, rubbishy cottons, beads,
and brass-wire sent into the depths of darkness, and in return came a
precious trickle of ivory.

"I had to wait in the station for ten days--an eternity. I lived in a
hut in the yard, but to be out of the chaos I would sometimes get into
the accountant's office. It was built of horizontal planks, and so badly
put together that, as he bent over his high desk, he was barred from
neck to heels with narrow strips of sunlight. There was no need to
open the big shutter to see. It was hot there too; big flies buzzed
fiendishly, and did not sting, but stabbed. I sat generally on the
floor, while, of faultless appearance (and even slightly scented),
perching on a high stool, he wrote, he wrote. Sometimes he stood up for
exercise. When a truckle-bed with a sick man (some invalided agent from
up-country) was put in there, he exhibited a gentle annoyance. 'The
groans of this sick person,' he said, 'distract my attention. And without
that it is extremely difficult to guard against clerical errors in this
climate. '

"One day he remarked, without lifting his head, 'In the interior you
will no doubt meet Mr. Kurtz. ' On my asking who Mr. Kurtz was, he
said he was a first-class agent; and seeing my disappointment at
this information, he added slowly, laying down his pen, 'He is a very
remarkable person. ' Further questions elicited from him that Mr. Kurtz
was at present in charge of a trading post, a very important one, in the
true ivory-country, at 'the very bottom of there. Sends in as much ivory
as all the others put together. . . . ' He began to write again. The sick
man was too ill to groan. The flies buzzed in a great peace.

"Suddenly there was a growing murmur of voices and a great tramping of
feet. A caravan had come in. A violent babble of uncouth sounds burst
out on the other side of the planks. All the carriers were speaking
together, and in the midst of the uproar the lamentable voice of the
chief agent was heard 'giving it up' tearfully for the twentieth time
that day. . . . He rose slowly. 'What a frightful row,' he said. He
crossed the room gently to look at the sick man, and returning, said to
me, 'He does not hear. ' 'What! Dead? ' I asked, startled. 'No, not yet,'
he answered, with great composure. Then, alluding with a toss of the
head to the tumult in the station-yard, 'When one has got to make
correct entries, one comes to hate those savages--hate them to the
death. ' He remained thoughtful for a moment. 'When you see Mr. Kurtz,'
he went on, 'tell him from me that everything here'--he glanced at the
desk--'is very satisfactory. I don't like to write to him--with those
messengers of ours you never know who may get hold of your letter--at
that Central Station. ' He stared at me for a moment with his mild,
bulging eyes. 'Oh, he will go far, very far,' he began again. 'He
will be a somebody in the Administration before long. They, above--the
Council in Europe, you know--mean him to be. '

"He turned to his work. The noise outside had ceased, and presently
in going out I stopped at the door. In the steady buzz of flies the
homeward-bound agent was lying flushed and insensible; the other,
bent over his books, was making correct entries of perfectly correct
transactions; and fifty feet below the doorstep I could see the still
tree-tops of the grove of death.

"Next day I left that station at last, with a caravan of sixty men, for
a two-hundred-mile tramp.

"No use telling you much about that. Paths, paths, everywhere; a
stamped-in network of paths spreading over the empty land, through
long grass, through burnt grass, through thickets, down and up chilly
ravines, up and down stony hills ablaze with heat; and a solitude, a
solitude, nobody, not a hut. The population had cleared out a long
time ago. Well, if a lot of mysterious niggers armed with all kinds of
fearful weapons suddenly took to traveling on the road between Deal and
Gravesend, catching the yokels right and left to carry heavy loads for
them, I fancy every farm and cottage thereabouts would get empty very
soon. Only here the dwellings were gone too. Still I passed through
several abandoned villages. There's something pathetically childish in
the ruins of grass walls. Day after day, with the stamp and shuffle of
sixty pair of bare feet behind me, each pair under a 60-lb. load. Camp,
cook, sleep, strike camp, march. Now and then a carrier dead in harness,
at rest in the long grass near the path, with an empty water-gourd and
his long staff lying by his side. A great silence around and above.
Perhaps on some quiet night the tremor of far-off drums, sinking,
swelling, a tremor vast, faint; a sound weird, appealing, suggestive,
and wild--and perhaps with as profound a meaning as the sound of bells
in a Christian country. Once a white man in an unbuttoned uniform,
camping on the path with an armed escort of lank Zanzibaris, very
hospitable and festive--not to say drunk. Was looking after the upkeep
of the road, he declared. Can't say I saw any road or any upkeep, unless
the body of a middle-aged negro, with a bullet-hole in the forehead,
upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles farther on, may be
considered as a permanent improvement. I had a white companion too, not
a bad chap, but rather too fleshy and with the exasperating habit of
fainting on the hot hillsides, miles away from the least bit of shade
and water. Annoying, you know, to hold your own coat like a parasol over
a man's head while he is coming-to. I couldn't help asking him once what
he meant by coming there at all. 'To make money, of course. What do you
think? ' he said, scornfully. Then he got fever, and had to be carried in
a hammock slung under a pole. As he weighed sixteen stone I had no end
of rows with the carriers. They jibbed, ran away, sneaked off with their
loads in the night--quite a mutiny. So, one evening, I made a speech in
English with gestures, not one of which was lost to the sixty pairs of
eyes before me, and the next morning I started the hammock off in front
all right. An hour afterwards I came upon the whole concern wrecked in
a bush--man, hammock, groans, blankets, horrors. The heavy pole had
skinned his poor nose. He was very anxious for me to kill somebody,
but there wasn't the shadow of a carrier near. I remembered the old
doctor,--'It would be interesting for science to watch the mental
changes of individuals, on the spot. ' I felt I was becoming
scientifically interesting. However, all that is to no purpose. On the
fifteenth day I came in sight of the big river again, and hobbled into
the Central Station. It was on a back water surrounded by scrub and
forest, with a pretty border of smelly mud on one side, and on the three
others inclosed by a crazy fence of rushes. A neglected gap was all the
gate it had, and the first glance at the place was enough to let you see
the flabby devil was running that show. White men with long staves in
their hands appeared languidly from amongst the buildings, strolling up
to take a look at me, and then retired out of sight somewhere. One of
them, a stout, excitable chap with black mustaches, informed me with
great volubility and many digressions, as soon as I told him who I was,
that my steamer was at the bottom of the river. I was thunderstruck.
What, how, why? Oh, it was 'all right. ' The 'manager himself' was there.
All quite correct. 'Everybody had behaved splendidly! splendidly! '--'you
must,' he said in agitation, 'go and see the general manager at once. He
is waiting! '

"I did not see the real significance of that wreck at once. I fancy I
see it now, but I am not sure--not at all. Certainly the affair was too
stupid--when I think of it--to be altogether natural. Still. . . . But
at the moment it presented itself simply as a confounded nuisance. The
steamer was sunk. They had started two days before in a sudden hurry
up the river with the manager on board, in charge of some volunteer
skipper, and before they had been out three hours they tore the bottom
out of her on stones, and she sank near the south bank. I asked myself
what I was to do there, now my boat was lost. As a matter of fact, I had
plenty to do in fishing my command out of the river. I had to set about
it the very next day. That, and the repairs when I brought the pieces to
the station, took some months.

"My first interview with the manager was curious. He did not ask me to
sit down after my twenty-mile walk that morning. He was commonplace in
complexion, in features, in manners, and in voice. He was of middle
size and of ordinary build. His eyes, of the usual blue, were perhaps
remarkably cold, and he certainly could make his glance fall on one as
trenchant and heavy as an ax. But even at these times the rest of his
person seemed to disclaim the intention. Otherwise there was only
an indefinable, faint expression of his lips, something stealthy--a
smile--not a smile--I remember it, but I can't explain. It was
unconscious, this smile was, though just after he had said something it
got intensified for an instant. It came at the end of his speeches like
a seal applied on the words to make the meaning of the commonest phrase
appear absolutely inscrutable. He was a common trader, from his youth
up employed in these parts--nothing more. He was obeyed, yet he inspired
neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That
was it!