“One evening as I was lying flat on the deck of my steamboat, I heard
voices approaching—and there were the nephew and the uncle strolling
along the bank. I laid my head on my arm again, and had nearly lost
myself in a doze, when somebody said in my ear, as it were: ‘I am as
harmless as a little child, but I don’t like to be dictated to. Am I
the manager—or am I not? I was ordered to send him there. It’s
incredible.’ ... I became aware that the two were standing on the shore
alongside the forepart of the steamboat, just below my head. I did not
move; it did not occur to me to move: I was sleepy. ‘It is
unpleasant,’ grunted the uncle. ‘He has asked the Administration to be
sent there,’ said the other, ‘with the idea of showing what he could
do; and I was instructed accordingly. Look at the influence that man
must have. Is it not frightful?’ They both agreed it was frightful,
then made several bizarre remarks: ‘Make rain and fine weather—one
man—the Council—by the nose’—bits of absurd sentences that got the
better of my drowsiness, so that I had pretty near the whole of my wits
about me when the uncle said, ‘The climate may do away with this
difficulty for you. Is he alone there?’ ‘Yes,’ answered the manager;
‘he sent his assistant down the river with a note to me in these terms:
“Clear this poor devil out of the country, and don’t bother sending
more of that sort. I had rather be alone than have the kind of men you
can dispose of with me.” It was more than a year ago. Can you imagine
such impudence!’ ‘Anything since then?’ asked the other hoarsely.
‘Ivory,’ jerked the nephew; ‘lots of it—prime sort—lots—most annoying,
from him.’ ‘And with that?’ questioned the heavy rumble. ‘Invoice,’ was
the reply fired out, so to speak. Then silence. They had been talking
about Kurtz.
“I was broad awake by this time, but, lying perfectly at ease, remained
still, having no inducement to change my position. ‘How did that ivory
come all this way?’ growled the elder man, who seemed very vexed. The
other explained that it had come with a fleet of canoes in charge of an
English half-caste clerk Kurtz had with him; that Kurtz had apparently
intended to return himself, the station being by that time bare of
goods and stores, but after coming three hundred miles, had suddenly
decided to go back, which he started to do alone in a small dugout with
four paddlers, leaving the half-caste to continue down the river with
the ivory. The two fellows there seemed astounded at anybody attempting
such a thing. They were at a loss for an adequate motive. As to me, I
seemed to see Kurtz for the first time. It was a distinct glimpse: the
dugout, four paddling savages, and the lone white man turning his back
suddenly on the headquarters, on relief, on thoughts of home—perhaps;
setting his face towards the depths of the wilderness, towards his
empty and desolate station. I did not know the motive. Perhaps he was
just simply a fine fellow who stuck to his work for its own sake. His
name, you understand, had not been pronounced once. He was ‘that man.’
The half-caste, who, as far as I could see, had conducted a difficult
trip with great prudence and pluck, was invariably alluded to as ‘that
scoundrel.’ The ‘scoundrel’ had reported that the ‘man’ had been very
ill—had recovered imperfectly.... The two below me moved away then a
few paces, and strolled back and forth at some little distance. I
heard: ‘Military post—doctor—two hundred miles—quite alone
now—unavoidable delays—nine months—no news—strange rumours.’ They
approached again, just as the manager was saying, ‘No one, as far as I
know, unless a species of wandering trader—a pestilential fellow,
snapping ivory from the natives.’ Who was it they were talking about
now? I gathered in snatches that this was some man supposed to be in
Kurtz’s district, and of whom the manager did not approve. ‘We will not
be free from unfair competition till one of these fellows is hanged for
an example,’ he said. ‘Certainly,’ grunted the other; ‘get him hanged!
Why not? Anything—anything can be done in this country. That’s what I
say; nobody here, you understand, here, can endanger your position.
And why? You stand the climate—you outlast them all. The danger is in
Europe; but there before I left I took care to—’ They moved off and
whispered, then their voices rose again. ‘The extraordinary series of
delays is not my fault. I did my best.’ The fat man sighed. ‘Very sad.’
‘And the pestiferous absurdity of his talk,’ continued the other; ‘he
bothered me enough when he was here. “Each station should be like a
beacon on the road towards better things, a centre for trade of course,
but also for humanizing, improving, instructing.” Conceive you—that
ass! And he wants to be manager! No, it’s—’ Here he got choked by
excessive indignation, and I lifted my head the least bit. I was
surprised to see how near they were—right under me. I could have spat
upon their hats. They were looking on the ground, absorbed in thought.
The manager was switching his leg with a slender twig: his sagacious
relative lifted his head. ‘You have been well since you came out this
time?’ he asked. The other gave a start. ‘Who? I? Oh! Like a charm—like
a charm. But the rest—oh, my goodness! All sick. They die so quick,
too, that I haven’t the time to send them out of the country—it’s
incredible!’ ‘Hm’m. Just so,’ grunted the uncle. ‘Ah! my boy, trust to
this—I say, trust to this.’ I saw him extend his short flipper of an
arm for a gesture that took in the forest, the creek, the mud, the
river—seemed to beckon with a dishonouring flourish before the sunlit
face of the land a treacherous appeal to the lurking death, to the
hidden evil, to the profound darkness of its heart. It was so startling
that I leaped to my feet and looked back at the edge of the forest, as
though I had expected an answer of some sort to that black display of
confidence. You know the foolish notions that come to one sometimes.
The high stillness confronted these two figures with its ominous
patience, waiting for the passing away of a fantastic invasion.
“They swore aloud together—out of sheer fright, I believe—then
pretending not to know anything of my existence, turned back to the
station. The sun was low; and leaning forward side by side, they seemed
to be tugging painfully uphill their two ridiculous shadows of unequal
length, that trailed behind them slowly over the tall grass without
bending a single blade.
“In a few days the Eldorado Expedition went into the patient
wilderness, that closed upon it as the sea closes over a diver. Long
afterwards the news came that all the donkeys were dead. I know nothing
as to the fate of the less valuable animals. They, no doubt, like the
rest of us, found what they deserved. I did not inquire. I was then
rather excited at the prospect of meeting Kurtz very soon. When I say
very soon I mean it comparatively. It was just two months from the day
we left the creek when we came to the bank below Kurtz’s station.
“Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings
of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees
were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest.
The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the
brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on,
deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery
sand-banks hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side. The
broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands; you lost your
way on that river as you would in a desert, and butted all day long
against shoals, trying to find the channel, till you thought yourself
bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known
once—somewhere—far away—in another existence perhaps. There were
moments when one’s past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you
have not a moment to spare for yourself; but it came in the shape of an
unrestful and noisy dream, rememb