and stepped into his shoes. I couldn't let it rest,
though; but when an opportunity offered at last to
meet my predecessor, the grass growing through his
ribs was tall enough to hide his bones. They were all
there. The supernatural being had not been touched
after he fell. And the village was deserted, the huts
gaped black, rotting, all askew within the fallen en-
dosures. A calamity had come to it, sure enough. The
people had vanished. Mad terror had scattered them,
men, women, and children, through the bush, and
they had never returned. What became of the hens I
don't know either. I should think the cause of progress
got them, anyhow. However, through this glorious
affair I got my appointment, before I had fairly begun
to hope for it.
"I flew around like mad to get ready, and before
forty-eight hours I was crossing the Channel to snow
myself to my employers, and sign the contract. In a
very few hours I arrived in a city that always makes
me think of a whited sepulchre. Prejudice no doubt. I
had no difficulty in finding the Company's offices. It
was the biggest thing in the town, and everybody I
met was full of it. They were going to run an over sea
empire, and make no end of coin by trade.
"A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, high
houses, innumerable windows with venetian blinds, a
dead silence, grass sprouting between the stones, im-
posing carriage archways right and left, immense
double doors standing ponderously ajar. I slipped
through one of these cracks, went up a swept and un-
garnished staircase, as arid as a desert, and opened the
first door I came to. Two women, one fat and the
other slim, sat on straw-bottomed chairs, knitting black
wool. The slim one got up and walked straight at me
-- still knitting with downcast eyes -- and only just as
I began to think of getting out of her way, as you
would for a somnambulist, stood still, and looked up.
Her dress was as plain as an umbrella-cover, and she
turned round without a word and preceded me into a
waiting-room. I gave my name, and looked about.
Deal table in the middle, plain chairs all round the
walls, on one end a large shining map, marked with
all the colours of a rainbow. There was a vast amount
of red -- good to see at any time, because one knows
that some real work is done in there, a deuce of a lot
of blue, a little green, smears of orange, and, on
the East Coast, a purple patch, to show where the
jolly pioneers of progress drink the jolly lager-beer.
However, I wasn't going into any of these. I was
going into the yellow. Dead in the centre. And the
river was there -- fascinating -- deadly -- like a snake.
Ough! A door opened, a white-haired secretarial head,
but wearing a compassionate expression, appeared, and
a skinny forefinger beckoned me into the sanctuary. 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 knittter 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 for-
mality,' 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 care-
less, with inkstains 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 ver-
mouths 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 un-
shaven 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 jok
e. 'So you are going out there. Famous.
Interesting, too.' He gave me a searching glance, and
made another note. 'Ever any madness in your fam-
ily?' 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, imperturb-
ably. '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-bye.
Ah! Good-bye. 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-bye 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-half-penny 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 labourer 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 has 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 com-
monplace 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 centre of a continent, I were
about to set off for the centre 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 mak-
ing, 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 greyish-whitish specks showed up clustered
inside the white surf, with a flag fiying above them
perhaps. Settlements some centuries old, and still no
bigger than pinheads 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 wilder-
ness, 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 particu-
larly 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' Bas-
sam, Little Popo; names that seemed to belong to
some sordid farce acted in front of a sinister back-cloth.
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 sombreness 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 posi-
tive pleasure, like the speech of a brother. It was some-
thing natural, that had its reason, that had a meaning
Now and then a boat from the shore gave one a mo-
mentary 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 move-
ment, 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 straightfor-
ward facts; but the feeling would not last long. Some-
thing would turn up to scare it away. Once, I remem-
ber, 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 six-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 six-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 hap-
pen. 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 im-
pression, but the general sense of vague and oppres-
sive 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, speak-
ing English with great precision and considerable bit-
terness. 'It is funny what some people will do for a
few francs a month. I wonder what becomes of that
kind when it goes upcountry?' 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 exca-
vations, or hanging to the declivity. A continuous noise
of the rapids above hovered over this scene of in-
habited 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 boulders, 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