Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fiction

  I ignored it. I had to go on.

  “Keep her full. Don’t check her way. That won’t do now,” I said, warningly.

  “I can’t see the sails very well,” the helmsman answered me, in strange, quavering tones.

  Was she close enough? Already she was, I won’t say in the shadow of the land, but in the very blackness of it, already swallowed up as it were, gone too close to be recalled, gone from me altogether.

  “Give the mate a call,” I said to the young man who stood at my elbow as still as death. “And turn all hands up.”

  My tone had a borrowed loudness reverberated from the height of the land. Several voices cried out together: “We are all on deck, sir.”

  Then stillness again, with the great shadow gliding closer, towering higher, without a light, without a sound. Such a hush had fallen on the ship that she might have been a bark of the dead floating in slowly under the very gate of Erebus. ga

  “My God! Where are we?”

  It was the mate moaning at my elbow. He was thunderstruck, and as it were deprived of the moral support of his whiskers. He clapped his hands and absolutely cried out, “Lost!”

  “Be quiet,” I said, sternly.

  He lowered his tone, but I saw the shadowy gesture of his despair. “What are we doing here?”

  “Looking for the land wind.”

  He made as if to tear his hair, and addressed me recklessly.

  “She will never get out. You have done it, sir. I knew it’d end in something like this. She will never weather, and you are too close now to stay. She’ll drift ashore before she’s round. O my God!”

  I caught his arm as he was raising it to batter his poor devoted head, and shook it violently.

  “She’s ashore already,” he wailed, trying to tear himself away.

  “Is she? ... Keep good full there!”

  “Good full, sir,” cried the helmsman in a frightened, thin, child-like voice.

  I hadn’t let go the mate’s arm and went on shaking it. “Ready about, do you hear? You go forward”—shake—“and stop there”—shake—“and hold your noise”—shake—“and see these head-sheets properly overhauled” —shake, shake—shake.

  And all the time I dared not look towards the land lest my heart should fail me. I released my grip at last and he ran forward as if fleeing for dear life.

  I wondered what my double there in the sail-locker thought of this commotion. He was able to hear everything—and perhaps he was able to understand why, on my conscience, it had to be thus close—no less. My first order “Hard alee!” re-echoed ominously under the towering shadow of Koh-ring as if I had shouted in a mountain gorge. And then I watched the land intently. In that smooth water and light wind it was impossible to feel the ship coming-to. No! I could not feel her. And my second self was making now ready to slip out and lower himself overboard. Perhaps he was gone already... ?

  The great black mass brooding over our very mastheads began to pivot away from the ship’s side silently. And now I forgot the secret stranger ready to depart, and remembered only that I was a total stranger to the ship. I did not know her. Would she do it? How was she to be handled?

  I swung the mainyard and waited helplessly. She was perhaps stopped, and her very fate hung in the balance, with the black mass of Koh-ring like the gate of the everlasting night towering over her taffrail. What would she do now? Had she way on her yet? I stepped to the side swiftly, and on the shadowy water I could see nothing except a faint phosphorescent flash revealing the glassy smoothness of the sleeping surface. It was impossible to tell—and I had not learned yet the feel of my ship. Was she moving? What I needed was something easily seen, a piece of paper, which I could throw overboard and watch. I had nothing on me. To run down for it I didn’t dare. There was no time. All at once my strained, yearning stare distinguished a white object floating within a yard of the ship’s side. White on the black water. A phosphorescent flash passed under it. What was that thing? ... I recognized my own floppy hat. It must have fallen off his head... and he didn’t bother. Now I had what I wanted—the saving mark for my eyes. But I hardly thought of my other self, now gone from the ship, to be hidden for ever from all friendly faces, to be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, with no brand of the curse on his sane forehead to stay a slaying hand... too proud to explain.

  And I watched the hat—the expression of my sudden pity for his mere flesh. It had been meant to save his homeless head from the dangers of the sun. And now—behold—it was saving the ship, by serving me for a mark to help out the ignorance of my strangeness. Ha! It was drifting forward, warning me just in time that the ship had gathered sternway.gb

  “Shift the helm,” I said in a low voice to the seaman standing still like a statue.

  The man’s eyes glistened wildly in the binnacle light as he jumped round to the other side and spun round the wheel.

  I walked to the breakgc of the poop. On the overshadowed deck all hands stood by the forebraces waiting for my order. The stars ahead seemed to be gliding from right to left. And all was so still in the world that I heard the quiet remark, “She’s round,” passed in a tone of intense relief between two seamen.

  “Let go and haul.”

  The foreyards ran round with a great noise, amidst cheery cries. And now the frightful whiskers made themselves heard giving various orders. Already the ship was drawing ahead. And I was alone with her. Nothing! no one in the world should stand now between us, throwing a shadow on the way of silent knowledge and mute affection, the perfect communion of a seaman with his first command.

  Walking to the taffrail, I was in time to make out, on the very edge of a darkness thrown by a towering black mass like the very gateway of Erebus—yes, I was in time to catch an evanescent glimpse of my white hat left behind to mark the spot where the secret sharer of my cabin and of my thoughts, as though he were my second self, had lowered himself into the water to take his punishment: a free man, a proud swimmer striking out for a new destiny.

  ENDNOTES

  Author’s Note

  1 (p.3) three stories in this volume: The volume is Youth: A Narrative; and Two Other Stories (1902). The two other stories are Heart of Darkness and The End of the Tether.

  2 (p.4) vanity in the Solomonian sense: This is an allusion to the Bible’s book of Ecclesiastes, which takes up the subject of vanity at length—for example, “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit” (1:14; King James Version [KJV]).

  3 (p. 5) The final paragraph of the author’s note has been omitted, as its subject is The End of the Tether, a story not included in this volume.

  “Youth”

  1 (p.7) a Conway boy: The Conway was a well-known Liverpool-based training ship for naval cadets. Conrad would again refer to the legacy of this ship in “The Secret Sharer,” in which one of the many circumstances binding the narrator to Leggatt is the fact that both have been trained on the Conway.

  2 (p. 7) square-rigged ... stun‘-sails ... alow and aloft: A square-rigged ship is one with rectangular sails placed at right angles to the length of the ship; stun’-sails are small auxiliary sails; and alow and aloft refer to the lower and higher portions of a ship, respectively.

  3 (p. 8) coasters ... the Capes: Coasters are small vessels used to sail along a coast; the Capes is a reference to the Cape of Good Hope, at the southwestern tip of Africa.

  4 (p. 8) the Judea: The ship Conrad served on as second mate from 1881 to 1883 and that he used as the model for the Judea was actually named the Palestine. Although the events of “Youth” are loosely based on Conrad’s experiences, the story is not (Conrad’s own claims notwithstanding) a work of autobiography. See the introductory essay to this volume for a discussion of the significance of some of Conrad’s alterations of the facts in writing the story.

  5 (p.9) “Do or Die”: The Judea’s motto is based on a well-known phrase that had been in circulation at least since the 1621 play The Island
Princess, by John Fletcher (1579-1625): “Let’s meet, and either doe or dye” (act 2, scene 2). The phrase had been used famously, in slightly altered form, in the 1854 poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” by the British poet laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892): “Their’s not to reason why, / Their’s but to do and die.” The poem sings the praises of a group of English soldiers dutifully engaged in a hopeless battle against the Russians during the Crimean War (1853—1856). The fact that this war heightened the regard for Britain of Polish nationalists—particularly those who lived in Russian-occupied Poland, such as Conrad’s family—adds additional resonance to this allusion.

  6 (p. 9) Yarmouth Roads... Dogger Bank: The first reference is to a seaway outside the port of Great Yarmouth in Norfolk; the second is to a sandbank in the North Sea.

  7 (p.10) Sartor Resartus and Burnaby’s Ride to Khiva: Sartor Resartus (1834) was by Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). A Ride to Khiva: Travels and Adventures in Central Asia (1876) was by Captain Frederick Burnaby (1842-1885). It is consistent with Marlow’s fond recounting of his own youthful recklessness that he expresses a preference for the writings of the man of action over those of the cultural critic. It is also significant that the subject of Burnaby’s immensely popular work—it was reprinted eleven times in the first year alone—is the alleged Russian threat to British India, suggesting a dovetailing of security concerns between Poland and Britain. (See endnote 5, above, for another suggestion as to how Conrad obliquely injects a Polish-based Russophobia into this story that extols English virtue.)

  8 (p. 16) the ghost of a Geordie skipper: A Geordie is a coal-shipping vessel; this usage is derived from the term Geordie to denote a native of Tyneside, a coal-mining and shipping area in northeastern England. The facetious depiction of Captain Beard emphasizes the anxiety and humiliation he experiences, in his inaugural command, over being in charge of a Geordie that has been delayed for so long that it has become a laughingstock.

  9 (p.16) Mesopotamia: The reference is to a region of southwest Asia between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers that was the site of the ancient civilizations of Assyria and Babylon.

  10 (p.17) Regent Street ... Byron’s works ... railway rug: Regent Street refers to a popular locale in the London shopping district. Lord Byron (1788-1824) was an English Romantic poet. A railway rug is a small rug used as a blanket during railway journeys.

  11 (p. 17) all the rats left the ship: Conrad here foreshadows the destruction of the judea via the superstition that if rats leave a ship before it embarks, it is fated to sink. The former seaman Conrad was fond of using this superstition in both nautical and nonnautical contexts. For example, in the 1907 novel The Secret Agent he would foreshadow the catastrophic demise of the family of the protagonist, Adolf Verloc, by likening the departure of Verloc’s mother-in-law from “his menaced home” to “rats leaving a doomed ship” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 137).

  12 (p. 18) from Land’s End to the Forelands: Land’s End is the southwestern tip of Britain (in County Cornwall), and the North and South Forelands are on the southeast coast (in County Kent).

  13 (p.18) brown nations... Solomon the Jew: This is a typically exotic account of non-European peoples, who are represented as surpassing, on the one hand, the cruelty and capriciousness of the Roman emperor Nero (A.D. 37-68) and, on the other hand, the wisdom of the biblical King Solomon.

  14 (p. 19) though the coal.... spontaneous combustion: Zdzislaw Najder points out that Conrad’s representation of the perils of shipping coal are not exaggerated, as it was, aside from grain, viewed as the most dangerous of all cargoes. He also notes that 1883 (the year in which Conrad served on the burning, sinking Palestine) was “a record year for accidents at sea: 2,019 seamen’s lives were lost—or about 1 percent of those in active service” (Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, p.78). The fact that no one dies on board Conrad’s fictional Judea and that the dangers are described in the language of comedy by the unflappable Marlow should not keep us from recognizing that the circumstances are extraordinarily perilous.

  15 (p. 22) “The carpenter’s bench.... fire in it’ ”: This episode is an example of what Ian Watt has termed Conrad’s technique of “delayed decoding,” which he characterizes as “the verbal equivalent of the impressionist painter’s attempt to render visual sensation directly.” Specifically, the method involves “present[ing] a sense impression and... withhold[ing] naming it or explaining its meaning until later” (Conrad in the Nineteenth Century, pp.175-176).

  16 (p. 26) And, mind, .... fate of nations: Marlow’s contention that these English crewmen are “without the drilled-in habit of obedience” furthers his claim that it is nature (“something inborn and subtle and everlasting”) rather than nurture that makes the Englishman great. It is consistent with this polemical aspect of the story that the member of the Judea’s former crew who has conducted himself with an un-English lack of fortitude is the steward Abraham, whom Marlow characterizes as a “poor devil of a mulatto” (p.15).

  17 (p. 28) the sparks flew upwards, as man is born to trouble: This language is taken from the Bible, Job 5:7 (KJV), a resonant intertext given Marlow’s description of the relentless sufferings of the crew of the Judea.

  18 (p. 32) the heat of life in the handful of dust: This is another allusion to the Hebrew Scriptures; in this case Marlow refers to the account in Genesis 2:7 (KJV) of God’s creation of human life from dust.

  Heart of Darkness

  1 (p. 37) We four: Marlow’s unnamed listeners are based on a group of Conrad’s friends: G. F. W. Hope, W B. Keen, and C. H. Mears, who, like their fictional counterparts, were, respectively, a company director, an accountant, and a lawyer. The unnamed primary narrator does not appear to be based on an actual person. The group met for social outings on the Thames estuary on a yacht that was, in fact, named the Nellie and was owned by Hope.

  2 (p. 39) all the men.... never returned: Sir Francis Drake (c.1540-1596) commanded the Golden Hind, with which he circumnavigated the globe from 1577 to 1580. Sir John Franklin (1786-1847) commanded an expedition, with the ships Erebus and Terror, in 1845 in search of the Northwest Passage (a route that would allow direct travel between the north Atlantic and the north Pacific). The ships became trapped in the Arctic ice, and all members of the expedition died. Conrad’s late essay “Geography and Some Explorers” praises Franklin’s accomplishments as an explorer.

  3 (p.40) The yarns of seamen ... illumination of moonshine: The contrast between these two approaches to storytelling is central to Conrad’s literary method. See the introductory essay to this volume for a discussion of this passage.

  4 (p. 40) when the Romans first came here: In 55 and 54 B.C., Julius Caesar led two Roman military expeditions into Britain, but it would not be until A.D. 43 that the actual Roman conquest of Britain would begin.

  5 (p.44) whited sepulchre: In the Gospel of Matthew (23:27) Jesus says, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness” (KJV). The fact that Brussels, the capital of Belgium, reminds Marlow of Jesus’ simile is intended to evoke the hypocrisy of King Leopold II’s claims that his agents in the Congo were engaged in a humanitarian mission.

  6 (p.45) a large shining map.... into the yellow: Maps during this era often represented imperial territories according to this color-coded system: red for British, blue for French, green for Italian, orange for Portuguese, purple for German, and yellow for Belgian. See the introductory essay to this volume for a discussion of this passage.

  7 (p.46) Ave! ... Morituri te salutant: The quotation translates as “Hail! ... Those who are about to die salute you” (Latin). Roman gladiators prefaced their matches with this salutation.

  8 (p.46) measure my head: The doctor is practicing craniology, which was a pseudoscience premised on the belief that head sizes and shapes were indicative of differences between the races, particularl
y with regard to intelligence.

  9 (p.48) “the labourer is worthy of his hire”: This phrase, piously uttered by Marlow’s naive aunt, is a quotation from a section of the Gospel of Luke (10:7, KJV) in which Jesus instructs his followers to engage in selfless missionary work. Marlow views her pronouncement with irony, given his knowledge of the material motives that actually drive imperialism.

  10 (p.51) one of the reclaimed: Marlow uses this phrase to denote the rifle-bearing African overseeing the chain gang for the same reason he refers to the white imperialists as “pilgrims”—to underscore the fraudulence of the benevolent rhetoric that legitimizes their ruthless activities. African collaborators such as the one depicted here were commonplace in Leopold’s Congo. As Adam Hochschild points out, “a class of foremen [was created] from among the conquered, like the kapos in the Nazi concentration camps and the predurki, or trusties, in the Soviet gulag. Just as terrorizing people is part of conquest, so is forcing someone else to administer the terror” (King Leopold’s Ghost, pp.122-123).

  11 (p. 52) Inferno: The reference is to the account of Hell in the Inferno, the first volume of the Divine Comedy trilogy by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321).

  12 (p. 55) Mr. Kurtz: In the manuscript, the name here (and in the next three instances) is given as “Klein.” Georges Antoine Klein was a company agent whom Conrad picked up at Stanley Falls and who died of dysentery during the voyage downstream on the Roi des Belges. Aside from these facts, however, the historical Klein bears no significant resemblance to Conrad’s Kurtz.

  13 (p.57) I did not see.... not at all: Marlow here alludes cryptically to an apparent conspiracy. The implication is that the manager, first by arranging to have the ship damaged and then by delaying its repairs, postpones Kurtz’s treatment, thereby ensuring that Kurtz will no longer be able to threaten his own professional position. As the manager subsequently projects—accurately, Marlow recognizes, with the wisdom of hindsight—the three months it will take to secure rivets and fix the ship “ought to do the affair” (p. 59). Marlow returns to this subject later, while describing the manager’s reaction to the evidently dying Kurtz: “he had no vital anxieties now, he took us both in with a comprehensive and satisfied glance: the ‘affair’ had come off as well as could be wished” (p. 114). In short, as Norman Sherry puts it, “the death of Kurtz is laid at the manager’s door” (Conrad’s Western World, p.47).