Heart of Darkness

slightly; I left him to his slumbers and leaped ashore.

  I did not betray Mr. Kurtz -- it was ordered I should

  never betray him -- it was written I should be loyal to

  the nightmare of my choice. I was anxious to deal

  with this shadow by myself alone -- and to this day I

  don't know why I was so jealous of sharing with any

  one the peculiar blackness of that experience.

  "As soon as I got on the bank I saw a trail -- a broad

  trail through the grass. I remember the exultation

  with which I said to myself, 'He can't walk -- he is

  crawling on all-fours -- I've got him.' The grass was

  wet with dew. I strode rapidly with clenched fists. I

  fancy I had some vague notion of falling upon him

  and giving him a drubbing. I don't know. I had some

  imbecile thoughts. The knitting old woman with the

  cat obtruded herself upon my memory as a most im-

  proper person to be sitting at the other end of such an

  affair. I saw a row of pilgrims squirting lead in the air

  out of Winchesters held to the hip. I thought I would

  never get back to the steamer, and imagined myself

  living alone and unarmed in the woods to an advanced

  age. Such silly things -- you know. And I remember I

  confounded the beat of the drum with the beating of

  my heart, and was pleased at its calm regularity.

  "I kept to the track though -- then stopped to listen.

  The night was very clear; a dark blue space, sparkling

  with dew and starlight, in which black things stood

  very still. I thought I could see a kind of motion

  ahead of me. I was strangely cocksure of everything

  that night. I actually left the track and ran in a wide

  semicircle (I verily believe chuckling to myself) so as

  to get in front of that stir, of that motion I had seen

  -- if indeed I had seen anything. I was circumventing

  Kurtz as though it had been a boyish game.

  "I came upon him, and, if he had not heard me

  coming, I would have fallen over him, too, but he got

  up in time. He rose, unsteady, long, pale, indistinct,

  like a vapour exhaled by the earth, and swayed

  slightly, misty and silent before me; while at my back

  the fires loomed between the trees, and the murmur

  of many voices issued from the forest. I had cut him

  off cleverly; but when actually confronting him I

  seemed to come to my senses, I saw the danger in its

  right proportion. It was by no means over yet. Sup-

  pose he began to shout? Though he could hardly

  stand, there was still plenty of vigour in his voice. 'Go

  away -- hide yourself,' he said, in that profound tone.

  It was very awful. I glanced back. We were within

  thirty yards from the nearest fire. A black figure stood

  up, strode on long black legs, waving long black arms,

  across the glow. It had horns -- antelope horns, I think

  -- on its head. Some sorcerer, some witch-man, no

  doubt: it looked fiendlike enough. 'Do you know what

  you are doing?' I whispered. 'Perfectly,' he answered,

  raising his voice for that single word: it sounded to me

  far off and yet loud, like a hail through a speaking-

  trumpet. 'If he makes a row we are lost,' I thought to

  myself. This clearly was not a case for fisticuffs, even

  apart from the very natural aversion I had to beat

  that Shadow -- this wandering and tormented thing.

  'You will be lost,' I said -- 'utterly lost.' One gets

  sometimes such a flash of inspiration, you know. I did

  say the right thing, though indeed he could not have

  been more irretrievably lost than he was at this very

  moment, when the foundations of our intimacy were

  being laid -- to endure -- to endure -- even to the end --

  even beyond.

  " 'I had irnmense plans,' he muttered irresolutely.

  'Yes,' said I; 'but if you try to shout I'll smash your

  head with --' There was not a stick or a stone near.

  'I will throttle you for good,' I corrected myself. 'I

  was on the threshold of great things,' he pleaded, in a

  voice of longing, with a wistfulness of tone that made

  my blood run cold. 'And now for this stupid scoun-

  drel --' 'Your success in Europe is assured in any

  case,' I affirmed steadily, I did not want to have the

  throttling of him, you understand -- and indeed it

  would have been very little use for any practical pur-

  pose. I tried to break the spell -- the heavy, mute spell

  of the wilderness -- that seemed to draw him to its

  pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and

  brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and mon-

  strous passions. This alone, I was convinced, had

  driven him out to the edge of the forest, to the bush,

  towards the gleam of fires, the throb of drums, the

  drone of weird incantations; this alone had beguiled

  his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted

  aspirations. And, don't you see, the terror of the posi-

  tion was not in being knocked on the head -- though I

  had a very lively sense of that danger, too -- but in

  this, that I had to deal with a being to whom I could

  not appeal in the name of anything high or low. I had,

  even like the niggers, to invoke him -- himself -- his

  own exalted and incredible degradation. There was

  nothing either above or below him, and I knew it. He

  had kicked himself loose of the earth. Confound the

  man! he had kicked the very earth to pieces. He was

  alone, and I before him did not know whether I stood

  on the ground or floated in the air. I've been telling

  you what we said -- repeating the phrases we pro-

  nounced -- but what's the good? They were common

  everyday words -- the familiar, vague sounds ex-

  changed on every waking day of life. But what of

  that? They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific

  suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases

  spoken in nightmares. Soul! If anybody ever struggled

  with a soul, I am the man. And I wasn't arguing with

  a lunatic either. Believe me or not, his intelligence was

  perfectly clear concentrated, it is true, upon himself

  with horrible intensity, yet clear; and therein was my

  only chance -- barring, of course, the killing him there

  and then, which wasn't so good, on account of un-

  avoidable noise. But his soul was mad. Being alone in

  the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by

  heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad. I had -- for my

  sins, I suppose -- to go through the ordeal of looking

  into it myself. No eloquence could have been so

  withering to one's belief in mankind as his final burst

  of sincerity. He struggled with himself, too. I saw it --

  I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul

  that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet strug-

  gling blindly with itself. I kept my head pretty well;

  but when I had him at last stretched on the couch, I

  wiped my forehead, while my legs shook under me as

  though I had carried half a ton on my back down that

  hill. And
yet I had only supported him, his bony arm

  clasped round my neck -- and he was not much heavier

  than a child.

  "When next day we left at noon, the crowd, of

  whose presence behind the curtain of trees I had been

  acutely conscious all the time, flowed out of the woods

  again, filled the clearing, covered the slope with a

  mass of naked, breathing, quivering, bronze bodies. I

  steamed up a bit, then swung down stream, and two

  thousand eyes followed the evolutions of the splash-

  ing, thumping, fierce river-demon beating the water

  with its terrible tail and breathing black smoke into

  the air. In front of the first rank, along the river,

  three men, plastered with bright red earth from head

  to foot, strutted to and fro restlessly. When we came

  abreast again, they faced the river, stamped their feet,

  nodded their horned heads, swayed their scarlet bod-

  ies; they shook towards the fierce river-demon a

  bunch of black feathers, a mangy skin with a pendent

  tail -- something that looked like a dried gourd; they

  shouted periodically together strings of amazing words

  that resembled no sounds of human language; and

  the deep murmurs of the crowd, interrupted sud-

  denly, were like the responses of some satanic litany.

  "We had carried Kurtz into the pilot-house: there

  was more air there. Lying on the couch, he stared

  through the open shutter. There was an eddy in the

  mass of human bodies, and the woman with helmeted

  head and tawny cheeks rushed out to the very brink

  of the stream. She put out her hands, shouted some-

  thing, and all that wild mob took up the shout in a

  roaring chorus of articulated, rapid, breathless ut-

  terance.

  " 'Do you understand this?' I asked.

  "He kept on looking out past me with fiery, long-

  ing eyes, with a mingled expression of wistfulness and

  hate. He made no answer, but I saw a smile, a smile of

  indefinable meaning, appearing on his colourless lips

  that a moment after twitched convulsively. 'Do I

  not?' he said slowly, gasping, as if the words had been

  torn out of him by a supernatural power.

  "I pulled the string of the whistle, and I did this

  because I saw the pilgrims on deck getting out their

  rifles with an air of anticipating a jolly lark. At the

  sudden screech there was a movement of abject terror

  through that wedged mass of bodies. 'Don't! don't you

  frighten them away,' cried some one on deck discon-

  solately. I pulled the string time after time. They

  broke and ran, they leaped, they crouched, they

  swerved, they dodged the flying terror of the sound.

  The three red chaps had fallen flat, face down on the

  shore, as though they had been shot dead. Only the

  barbarous and superb woman did not so much as

  flinch, and stretched tragically her bare arms after us

  over the sombre and glittering river.

  "And then that imbecile crowd down on the deck

  started their little fun, and I could see nothing more

  for smoke.

  "The brown current ran swiftly out of the heart of

  darkness, bearing us down towards the sea with twice

  the speed of our upward progress; and Kurtz's life

  was running swiftly, too, ebbing, ebbing out of his

  heart into the sea of inexorable time. The manager

  was very placid, 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. I

  saw the time approaching when I would be left alone

  of the party of 'unsound method.' The pilgrims

  looked upon me with disfavour. I was, so to speak,

  numbered with the dead. It is strange how I accepted

  this unforeseen partnership, this choice of nightmares

  forced upon me in the tenebrous land invaded by

  these mean and greedy phantoms.

  "Kurtz discoursed. A voice! a voice! It rang deep to

  the very last. It survived his strength to hide in the

  magnificent folds of eloquence the barren darkness of

  his heart. Oh, he struggled! he struggled! The wastes

  of his weary brain were haunted by shadowy images

  now -- images of wealth and fame revolving obse-

  quiously round his unextinguishable gift of noble and

  lofty expression. My Intended, my station, my career,

  my ideas -- these were the subjects for the occasional

  utterances of elevated sentiments. The shade of the

  original Kurtz frequented the bedside of the hollow

  sham, whose fate it was to be buried presently in the

  mould of primeval earth. But both the diabolic love

  and the unearthly hate of the mysteries it had pene-

  trated fought for the possession of that soul satiated

  with primitive emotions, avid of lying fame, of sham

  distinction, of all the appearances of success and power.

  "Sometimes he was contemptibly childish. He de-

  sired to have kings meet him at railway-stations on his

  return from some ghastly Nowhere, where he in-

  tended to accomplish great things. 'You show them

  you have in you something that is really profitable,

  and then there will be no limits to the recognition of

  your ability,' he would say. 'Of course you must take

  care of the motives -- right motives -- always.' The

  long reaches that were like one and the same reach,

  monotonous bends that were exactly alike, slipped

  past the steamer with their multitude of secular trees

  looking patiently after this grimy fragment of an-

  other world, the forerunner of change, of conquest,

  of trade, of massacres, of blessings. I looked ahead --

  piloting. 'Close the shutter,' said Kurtz suddenly one

  day; 'I can't bear to look at this.' I did so. There was

  a silence. 'Oh, but I will wring your heart yet!' he

  cried at the invisible wilderness.

  "We broke down -- as I had expected -- and had to

  lie up for repairs at the head of an island. This delay

  was the first thing that shook Kurtz's confidence. One

  morning he gave me a packet of papers and a photo-

  graph -- the lot tied together with a shoe-string. 'Keep

  this for me,' he said. 'This noxious fool' (meaning the

  manager) 'is capable of prying into my boxes when I

  am not looking.' In the afternoon I saw him. He was

  lying on his back with closed eyes, and I withdrew

  quietly, but I heard him mutter, 'Live rightly, die, die

  . .' I listened. There was nothing more. Was he

  rehearsing some speech in his sleep, or was it a frag-

  ment of a phrase from some newspaper article? He

  had been writing for the papers and meant to do so

  again, 'for the furthering of my ideas. It's a duty.'

  "His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him

  as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom

  of a precipice where the sun never shines. But I had

  not much time to give him, because I was helping the

  engine-driver to take to pieces the leaky cylinders, to

  straighten a bent conn
ecting-rod, and in other such

  matters. I lived in an infernal mess of rust, filings,

  nuts, bolts, spanners, hammers, ratchet drills -- things

  I abominate, because I don't get on with them. I

  tended the little forge we fortunately had aboard; I

  toiled wearily in a wretched scrap-heap -- unless I had

  the shakes too bad to stand.

  "One evening coming in with a candle I was star-

  tled to hear him say a little tremulously, 'I am lying

  here in the dark waiting for death.' The light was

  within a foot of his eyes. I forced myself to murmur,

  'Oh, nonsense!' and stood over him as if transfixed.

  "Anything approaching the change that came over

  his features I have never seen before, and hope never

  to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated.

  It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that

  ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless

  power, of craven terror -- of an intense and hopeless

  despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of

  desire, temptation, and surrender during that su-

  preme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in

  a whisper at some image, at some vision -- he cried out

  twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:

  " 'The horror! The horror!'

  "I blew the candle out and left the cabin. The pil-

  grims were dining in the mess-room, and I took my

  place opposite the manager, who lifted his eyes to

  give me a questioning glance, which I successfully ig-

  nored. He leaned back, serene, with that peculiar

  smile of his sealing the unexpressed depths of his

  meanness. A continuous shower of small flies streamed

  upon the lamp, upon the cloth, upon our hands and

  faces. Suddenly the manager's boy put his insolent

  black head in the doorway, and said in a tone of scath-

  ing contempt:

  " 'Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.'

  "All the pilgrims rushed out to see. I remained,

  and went on with my dinner. I believe that I was con-

  sidered brutally callous. However, I did not eat much.

  There was a lamp in there -- light, don't you know --

  and outside it was so beastly, beastly dark. I went no

  more near the remarkable man who had pronounced

  a judgment upon the adventures of his soul on this

  earth. The voice was gone. What else had been there?

  But I am of course aware that next day the pilgrims

  buried something in a muddy hole.

  "And then they very nearly buried me.

  "However, as you see, I did not go to join Kurtz

  there and then. I did not. I remained to dream the

  nightmare out to the end, and to show my loyalty to

  Kurtz once more. Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing

  life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic

  for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it

  is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late --

  a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled

  with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can

  imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness,

  with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without

  spectators, without clamour, without glory, without

  the great desire of victory, without the great fear of

  defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism,

  without much belief in your own right, and still less

  in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ulti-

  mate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some

  of us think it to be. I was within a hair's breadth of the

  last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with

  humiliation that probably I would have nothing to

  say. This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a

  remarkable man. He had something to say. He said

  it. Since I had peeped over the edge myself, I under-

  stand better the meaning of his stare, that could not

  see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to

  embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to pene-

  trate all the hearts that beat in the darkness. He had

  summed up -- he had judged. 'The horror!' He was a

  remarkable man. After all, this was the expression of

  some sort of belief; it had candour, it had conviction,

  it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had

  the appalling face of a glimpsed truth -- the strange

  commingling of desire and hate. And it is not my own

  extremity I remember best -- a vision of greyness with-

  out form filled with physical pain, and a careless con-

  tempt for the evanescence of all things -- even of this

  pain itself. No! It is his extremity that I seem to have

  lived through. True, he had made that last stride, he

  had stepped over the edge, while I had been permit-