No More Learning

Sometimes we came upon
a station close by the bank, clinging to the skirts of the unknown, and
the white men rushing out of a tumble-down hovel, with great gestures of
joy and surprise and welcome, seemed very strange,--had the appearance
of being held there captive by a spell. The word ivory would ring in
the air for a while--and on we went again into the silence, along empty
reaches, round the still bends, between the high walls of our
winding way, reverberating in hollow claps the ponderous beat of the
stern-wheel. Trees, trees, millions of trees, massive, immense, running
up high; and at their foot, hugging the bank against the stream, crept
the little begrimed steamboat, like a sluggish beetle crawling on the
floor of a lofty portico. It made you feel very small, very lost, and
yet it was not altogether depressing, that feeling. After all, if you
were small, the grimy beetle crawled on--which was just what you wanted
it to do. Where the pilgrims imagined it crawled to I don't know.
To some place where they expected to get something, I bet! For me it
crawled toward Kurtz--exclusively; but when the steam-pipes started
leaking we crawled very slow. The reaches opened before us and closed
behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar
the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart
of darkness. It was very quiet there. At night sometimes the roll of
drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain
sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air high over our heads, till
the first break of day. Whether it meant war, peace, or prayer we could
not tell. The dawns were heralded by the descent of a chill stillness;
the woodcutters slept, their fires burned low; the snapping of a twig
would make you start. We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an
earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fancied
ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance,
to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil. But
suddenly, as we struggled round a bend, there would be a glimpse of rush
walls, of peaked grass-roofs, a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs,
a mass of hands clapping, of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes
rolling, under the droop of heavy and motionless foliage. The steamer
toiled along slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy.
The prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us--who
could tell? We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings;
we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane
men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. We could not
understand, because we were too far and could not remember, because we
were traveling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone,
leaving hardly a sign--and no memories.

"The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled
form of a conquered monster, but there--there you could look at a thing
monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were--No, they were
not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it--this suspicion of
their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled, and
leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just
the thought of their humanity--like yours--the thought of your remote
kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly
enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that
there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible
frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it
which you--you so remote from the night of first ages--could comprehend.
And why not? The mind of man is capable of anything--because everything
is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after
all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valor, rage--who can tell? --but
truth--truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and
shudder--the man knows, and can look on without a wink. But he must at
least be as much of a man as these on the shore. He must meet that
truth with his own true stuff--with his own inborn strength. Principles?
Principles won't do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags--rags that would
fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief. An
appeal to me in this fiendish row--is there? Very well; I hear; I admit,
but I have a voice too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that
cannot be silenced. Of course, a fool, what with sheer fright and fine
sentiments, is always safe. Who's that grunting? You wonder I didn't go
ashore for a howl and a dance? Well, no--I didn't. Fine sentiments, you
say? Fine sentiments, be hanged! I had no time. I had to mess about with
white-lead and strips of woolen blanket helping to put bandages on
those leaky steam-pipes--I tell you. I had to watch the steering, and
circumvent those snags, and get the tin-pot along by 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
woodpile. 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 Tower, 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 penciled 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 river-side. 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 anyone 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 clamor, 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 side-spring
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 all be 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 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-defense. 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 river-side 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 honorable 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 color, 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 honor?
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 somber 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, dishonor, 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 clamor that had swept by us on the river-bank, behind the blind
whiteness of the fog.

"Two pilgrims were quarreling 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 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 look-out. 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 river-side 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 of 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 look-out? 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 sandbank,
or rather of a chain of shallow patches stretching down the middle of
the river. They were discolored, 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 teak-wood 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 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 clumsily. Arrows, by
Jove! We were being shot at! I stepped in quickly to close the shutter
on the land side. That fool-helmsman, his hands on the spokes, was
lifting his knees high, stamping his feet, champing his mouth, like a
reined-in horse. Confound him! And we were staggering within ten feet of
the bank. I had to lean right out to swing the heavy shutter, and I saw
a face amongst the leaves on the level with my own, looking at me very
fierce and steady; and then suddenly, as though a veil had been removed
from my eyes, I made out, deep in the tangled gloom, naked breasts,
arms, legs, glaring eyes,--the bush was swarming with human limbs in
movement, glistening, of bronze color. The twigs shook, swayed, and
rustled, the arrows flew out of them, and then the shutter came to.
'Steer her straight,' I said to the helmsman. He held his head rigid,
face forward; but his eyes rolled, he kept on lifting and setting down
his feet gently, his mouth foamed a little. 'Keep quiet! ' I said in a
fury. I might just as well have ordered a tree not to sway in the wind.
I darted out. Below me there was a great scuffle of feet on the iron
deck; confused exclamations; a voice screamed, 'Can you turn back? '
I caught shape of a V-shaped ripple on the water ahead. What? Another
snag! A fusillade burst out under my feet. The pilgrims had opened with
their Winchesters, and were simply squirting lead into that bush. A
deuce of a lot of smoke came up and drove slowly forward. I swore at
it. Now I couldn't see the ripple or the snag either. I stood in the
doorway, peering, and the arrows came in swarms. They might have been
poisoned, but they looked as though they wouldn't kill a cat. The bush
began to howl. Our wood-cutters raised a warlike whoop; the report of a
rifle just at my back deafened me. I glanced over my shoulder, and the
pilot-house was yet full of noise and smoke when I made a dash at the
wheel. The fool-nigger had dropped everything, to throw the shutter
open and let off that Martini-Henry. He stood before the wide opening,
glaring, and I yelled at him to come back, while I straightened the
sudden twist out of that steamboat. There was no room to turn even if I
had wanted to, the snag was somewhere very near ahead in that confounded
smoke, there was no time to lose, so I just crowded her into the
bank--right into the bank, where I knew the water was deep.

"We tore slowly along the overhanging bushes in a whirl of broken twigs
and flying leaves. The fusillade below stopped short, as I had foreseen
it would when the squirts got empty. I threw my head back to a glinting
whizz that traversed the pilot-house, in at one shutter-hole and out
at the other. Looking past that mad helmsman, who was shaking the empty
rifle and yelling at the shore, I saw vague forms of men running bent
double, leaping, gliding, distinct, incomplete, evanescent. Something
big appeared in the air before the shutter, the rifle went overboard,
and the man stepped back swiftly, looked at me over his shoulder in an
extraordinary, profound, familiar manner, and fell upon my feet. The
side of his head hit the wheel twice, and the end of what appeared
a long cane clattered round and knocked over a little camp-stool. It
looked as though after wrenching that thing from somebody ashore he had
lost his balance in the effort. The thin smoke had blown away, we were
clear of the snag, and looking ahead I could see that in another hundred
yards or so I would be free to sheer off, away from the bank; but my
feet felt so very warm and wet that I had to look down. The man had
rolled on his back and stared straight up at me; both his hands clutched
that cane. It was the shaft of a spear that, either thrown or lunged
through the opening, had caught him in the side just below the ribs; the
blade had gone in out of sight, after making a frightful gash; my shoes
were full; a pool of blood lay very still, gleaming dark-red under the
wheel; his eyes shone with an amazing luster. The fusillade burst out
again. He looked at me anxiously, gripping the spear like something
precious, with an air of being afraid I would try to take it away from
him. I had to make an effort to free my eyes from his gaze and attend
to the steering. With one hand I felt above my head for the line of
the steam-whistle, and jerked out screech after screech hurriedly. The
tumult of angry and warlike yells was checked instantly, and then from
the depths of the woods went out such a tremulous and prolonged wail of
mournful fear and utter despair as may be imagined to follow the flight
of the last hope from the earth. There was a great commotion in the
bush; the shower of arrows stopped, a few dropping shots rang out
sharply--then silence, in which the languid beat of the stern-wheel came
plainly to my ears. I put the helm hard a-starboard at the moment when
the pilgrim in pink pyjamas, very hot and agitated, appeared in the
doorway. 'The manager sends me--' he began in an official tone, and
stopped short. 'Good God! ' he said, glaring at the wounded man.

"We two whites stood over him, and his lustrous and inquiring glance
enveloped us both. I declare it looked as though he would presently put
to us some question in an understandable language; but he died without
uttering a sound, without moving a limb, without twitching a muscle.
Only in the very last moment, as though in response to some sign we
could not see, to some whisper we could not hear, he frowned heavily,
and that frown gave to his black death-mask an inconceivably somber,
brooding, and menacing expression. The luster of inquiring glance faded
swiftly into vacant glassiness. 'Can you steer? ' I asked the agent
eagerly. He looked very dubious; but I made a grab at his arm, and he
understood at once I meant him to steer whether or no. To tell you
the truth, I was morbidly anxious to change my shoes and socks. 'He is
dead,' murmured the fellow, immensely impressed. 'No doubt about it,'
said I, tugging like mad at the shoe-laces. 'And, by the way, I suppose
Mr. Kurtz is dead as well by this time. '

"For the moment that was the dominant thought. There was a sense of
extreme disappointment, as though I had found out I had been striving
after something altogether without a substance. I couldn't have been
more disgusted if I had traveled all this way for the sole purpose of
talking with Mr. Kurtz. Talking with. . . . I flung one shoe overboard,
and became aware that that was exactly what I had been looking forward
to--a talk with Kurtz. I made the strange discovery that I had never
imagined him as doing, you know, but as discoursing. I didn't say to
myself, 'Now I will never see him,' or 'Now I will never shake him by
the hand,' but, 'Now I will never hear him. ' The man presented himself
as a voice. Not of course that I did not connect him with some sort of
action. Hadn't I been told in all the tones of jealousy and admiration
that he had collected, bartered, swindled, or stolen more ivory than all
the other agents together? That was not the point. The point was in his
being a gifted creature, and that of all his gifts the one that stood
out pre-eminently, that carried with it a sense of real presence, was
his ability to talk, his words--the gift of expression, the bewildering,
the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible, the
pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from the heart of an
impenetrable darkness.

"The other shoe went flying unto the devil-god of that river. I thought,
'By Jove! it's all over. We are too late; he has vanished--the gift has
vanished, by means of some spear, arrow, or club. I will never hear that
chap speak after all,'--and my sorrow had a startling extravagance
of emotion, even such as I had noticed in the howling sorrow of these
savages in the bush. I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation
somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in
life. . . . Why do you sigh in this beastly way, somebody? Absurd? Well,
absurd. Good Lord! mustn't a man ever--Here, give me some tobacco. " . . .

There was a pause of profound stillness, then a match flared, and
Marlow's lean face appeared, worn, hollow, with downward folds and
dropped eyelids, with an aspect of concentrated attention; and as he
took vigorous draws at his pipe, it seemed to retreat and advance out of
the night in the regular flicker of the tiny flame. The match went out.

"Absurd! " he cried. "This is the worst of trying to tell. . . . Here
you all are, each moored with two good addresses, like a hulk with
two anchors, a butcher round one corner, a policeman round another,
excellent appetites, and temperature normal--you hear--normal from
year's end to year's end. And you say, Absurd! Absurd be--exploded!
Absurd! My dear boys, what can you expect from a man who out of sheer
nervousness had just flung overboard a pair of new shoes.