03 - Chapter 2 - Part 1. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

03 - Chapter 2 - Part 1. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.  
In this powerful novella based on Joseph Conrad's own experiences in the Belgian Congo, Charles Marlow, an experienced seaman, tells a small group of friends about a profoundly disturbing episode in his life where he was employed by a large colonising enterprise to sail a tinpot steamer up a river into the heart of Africa with a view to bringing out an ivory trader who had gone rogue. Conrad biographer Maya Janasoff has argued that while Marlow's descriptions of Africans are crudely racist, the author binds this racist language with "a potentially radical suggestion. What made the difference between savagery and civilization, Conrad was saying, transcended skin color; it even transcended place. The issue for Conrad wasn’t that 'savages' were inhuman. It was that any human could be a savage."

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Part one of chapter two of the Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
Bread by Bob Neufeld. One evening, as I was lying
flat on the deck of my steamboat, I heard voices approaching,

(00:23):
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
sat in my ear. As it were. I am as
harmless as a little child. But I don't like to
be dictated too. Am I the manager? Or am I not?

(00:44):
I was ordered to send him there? It's incredible. I
became aware that the two were standing on the shore
alongside the fore part of the steamboat, just below my head.
I did not move. It did not occurred to me
to move. I was sleepy. It is unpleasant, granted the uncle.

(01:07):
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

(01:28):
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,

(01:48):
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

(02:15):
jerked the nephew. Lots of it, prime sort, lots most
annoying from him, And with that questioned the heavy rumble
in voice was the reply fired out, so to speak,
Then silence. They had been talking about Kerts. I was

(02:36):
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

(02:58):
English half caste. Clerk 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

(03:21):
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

(03:43):
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.

(04:08):
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

(04:31):
a few paces, and strolled back and forth. At some
little distance. I heard military posts. Doctor two hundred miles
quite alone. Now unavoidable delays, nine months, no news, strange rumors.
They approached again, just as the manager was saying, no one,

(04:52):
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 Courts's district,
and of whom the manager did not approve. We will

(05:13):
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

(05:37):
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 ver ver sad,

(06:01):
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 center for trade, of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing.

(06:22):
Conceive you that ass, and he wants to be the 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,

(06:45):
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 ay, oh, like a charm,
Like a charm. But the rest, oh, my goodness, all sick.

(07:11):
They die so quick too, that I haven't the time
to send them out of the country. It's incredible, Mum,
trust 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

(07:32):
in the forest, the creek, the mud, the river seemed
to beckon with a dishonoring 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

(07:54):
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 patients, waiting for the passing
away of a fantastic invasion, they swore aloud together, not

(08:16):
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 up hill, their two ridiculous
shadows of unequal length that trailed behind them. Slowly over

(08:37):
the tall grass without bending a single blade. In a
few days, the El Dorado 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

(08:58):
of the less valuable annamals. 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
courts very soon. When I say very soon, I meet
it comparatively. It was just two months from the day

(09:20):
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 big trees were kings. An
empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air

(09:44):
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 sandb hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side,

(10:04):
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 forever from everything you had known once
somewhere far away, in another existence. Perhaps there were moments

(10:29):
when once 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, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of
this strange world of plants and water and silence. And

(10:50):
this stillness of life did not, in the least resemble
a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force
brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with
a vengeful aspect. I got used to it. Afterwards, I
did not see it anymore. I had no time. I

(11:12):
had to keep guessing at the channel. I had to discern,
mostly by inspiration, the signs of hidden banks. I watched
for sunken stones. I was learning to clap my teeth
smartly before my heart flew out when I shaved by
a fluke, some infernal, sly old snag that would have

(11:33):
ripped the life out of the tin pot steamboats and
drowned all the pilgrims. I had to keep a look
out for the signs of dead wood we could cut
up in the night for next day's steaming. When you
have to attend to things of that sort, to the
mere incidence of the surface, the reality, the reality I
tell you, fades. The inner truth is hidden, luckily, luckily.

(11:59):
But I felt it all the same. I felt often
its mysterious stillness watching me at my monkey tricks, just
as it watches you fellows performing on your respective tight ropes.
For what is it? Half a crown a tumble, Try
to be civil, Marlowe growled a voice, and I knew

(12:20):
there was at least one listener awake besides myself. I
beg your pardon. I forgot the heartache, which makes up
the rest of the price. And indeed, what does the
price matter if the trick be well done. You do
your tricks very well. And I didn't do badly either,

(12:41):
since I managed not to sink that steamboat on my
first trip. It's a wonder to me. Yet, imagine a
blindfolded man set to drive a van over a bad road.
I sweated and shivered over that business considerably, I can
tell you. After all, for a seaman to scrape the

(13:03):
bottom of the thing that supposed to float all the
time under his care is the unpardonable sin. No one
may know of it, but you never forget the thumb.
Pay a blow on the very heart. You remember it,
you dream of it, you wake up at night and
think of it years after, and go hot and cold

(13:25):
all over. I don't pretend to say that steamboat floated
all the time. More than once she had to wait
for a bit with twenty cannibals splashing around and pushing.
We had enlisted some of these chaps on the way
for a crew. Fine fellows cannibals in their place. They

(13:47):
were men one could work with, and I am grateful
to them. And after all, they did not eat each
other before my face. They had brought along a provision
of hippo meat, which went rotten and made the mystery
of the wilderness stink in my nostrils. Who I can
sniff it now? I had the manager on board, and

(14:09):
three or four pilgrims, with their staves all complete. 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

(14:29):
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

(14:49):
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.

(15:10):
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 its crawl too, I don't know, to some place

(15:33):
where they expected to get something I bet for me.
It crawled towards Kerts exclusively, but when the steam pipe
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.

(15:56):
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

(16:21):
could not tell. The dawns were heralded by the descent
of a chill stillness. The wood cutters 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

(16:43):
have fancied ourselves the first of men, taking possession of
an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the costs of
profound anguish and of excessive toil. But suddenly, as we
struggled round a bend, there would be a glimpse of rush,
war of peaked grass, roofs, a burst of yells, a

(17:03):
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.

(17:28):
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

(17:50):
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 were accustomed to look upon
the shackled form of a conquered monster, But there there

(18:11):
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, the suspicion
of their not being inhuman. It could come slowly to one.
They howled and leaped and spun and made horrid faces.

(18:35):
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 mad enough, you would admit to
yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace

(18:56):
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

(19:18):
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

(19:40):
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 won't do acquisitions, clothes,
pretty rags, ra it would fly off at the first

(20:01):
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,

(20:26):
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

(20:47):
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

(21:11):
had to look after the savage. It was fireman. He
was an improved specimen. He could fire up a vertical boiler.
He was there below, 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

(21:33):
for that really fine chap. He squintered at the steam
gage and at the water gage with an evident effort
of intrepidity, and he 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 stabbing his

(21:55):
foot 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

(22:17):
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 bank slipped past us slowly,

(22:40):
The short noise was left behind the interminable miles of silence,
and we crept on towards Kurts. 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 fire ironman nor I had any time to peer

(23:02):
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 wood pile. This was unexpected. We came to

(23:25):
the bank and on the stack of firewood found a
flat piece of board with some faded pencil riding on it.
When deciphered, it said, would 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?

(23:49):
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 reproach. Something was wrong above,
But what and how much that was the question. We
commented adversely upon the imbecility of that telegraphic style. The

(24:12):
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,

(24:34):
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

(24:58):
Inquiry into some Points of Seamanship by a man Towser thousand,
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

(25:19):
handled the amazing antiquity with the greatest possible tenderness, lest
it should dissolve in my hands. Within tousand or towser
was inquiring earnestly into the breaking strain of ships, chains
and tackle, and other such matters. Not a very enthralling book,

(25:39):
but at the first glance you could see there was
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

(26:02):
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.

(26:26):
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 woodpile
was gone, and the manager, aided by all the pilgrims,

(26:49):
was shouting at me from the river side. I slipped
the book into my pocket. I assure you that 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,

(27:10):
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.

(27:32):
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.

(27:56):
Sometimes I would pick out a tree a little way
ahead to make measure our progress towards kurtz By, but
I lost it invariably before we got abreast. To keep
the eye 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

(28:20):
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
a manager? One gets sometimes such a flash of insight.

(28:46):
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 kurt I wanted to push on, but
the manager looked grave and told me the navigation up

(29:06):
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 met nearly three hours

(29:31):
of 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

(29:52):
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

(30:15):
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
trans Not the faintest sound of any kind could be heard.
You looked on, amazed, and began to suspect yourself of

(30:37):
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 clamming and

(30:58):
more blinding than the night night. It did not shift
or drive. It was just there standing all round you,
like something solid. But eight or nine perhaps it lifted
as a shutter lifts. We had a glimpse of the
towering multitude of trees, of the immense mattered jungle, with

(31:20):
the blazing little ball of the sun hanging over it,
all perfectly still. And then the white shudder 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.

(31:42):
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.

(32:03):
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 hairried outbreak
of almost intolerably excessive shrieking, which stopped short, leaving us

(32:25):
stiffened in a variety of silly attitudes and obstinately listening
to the nearly as appalling an 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 pajamas

(32:46):
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

(33:08):
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.

(33:32):
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 in awed voice. We will all be
butchered in this fog, murmured another. The faces twitched with
a strain, the hands trembled slightly, the eyes forgot to wink.

(33:57):
It was very curious to see the contralt of expressions
of the white men and of the black fellows of
our crew, who were as much strange as 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 shot by

(34:18):
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
out the chain. Several exchanged short, grunting phrases, which seemed
to settle the matter to their satisfaction. Their headman, a young,

(34:41):
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 a good fellowship's sake, catch him, he snapped, with
a bloodshot widening of his eyes and a flash of

(35:03):
sharp teeth. Catch him, give him to us, to you, eh,
I asked, And what would you do with him? Eat them?
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

(35:25):
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

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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,

(36:11):
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

(36:31):
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 riverside villages.
You can see how that worked. There were either no villages,

(36:54):
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

(37:15):
good their extravagant salary could be to them. I must
say it was paid with a regularity worthy of a
large and honorable tracking company for the rest. The only
thing to eat, though it didn't look eatable. In the
least I saw in their possession were a few lumps
of some stuff, like half cooked dough of a dirty

(37:36):
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

(37:57):
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,

(38:18):
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
owned to you that just then I perceived in a
new light, as it were, how unwholesome the pilgrims looked,

(38:40):
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 the time. Perhaps
apps I had a little fever too. One can't live

(39:03):
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,

(39:24):
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

(39:44):
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 prince, they are less than
chaff in a breeze. Don't you know the devilry of

(40:06):
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,

(40:32):
And these chaps too, had no earthly reason for any
kind of scruple restraint. I would just as soon have
expected restraint from a hyaena 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 a sea, like a ripple on the unfathomable enigma,

(40:56):
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

(41:19):
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 mister 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.

(41:44):
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 to the bottom, we
would be absolutely in the air in space. We wouldn't
be able to tell where we were going to, whether

(42:05):
up or down stream or a cross till we fetched
against one bank or the other, and then we wouldn't
know at first which it was. Of course, I had
no move I had no mind for a smash up.
You couldn't imagine a more deadly place for a shipwreck.
Whether we drowned at once or not, we were sure

(42:27):
to perry 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.

(42:49):
You are captain, he said, with a marked civility. I
turned my shoulder to him in a 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,
Kurt's grubbing for ivory and the wretched bush was beset

(43:10):
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

(43:32):
and 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 riverside bushes were certainly very thick, but the undergrowth
behind was evidently penetrable. However, during the short lift, I

(43:57):
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 immediate hostile intention. Unexpected wild and violent

(44:17):
as they had been, they had given me an irresistible
impression of sorrow. The glimpse of the steamboats had for
some reason filled those savages with unrestrained grief. The danger,
if any, I expounded, was from the proximity to a
great human passion let loose. Even extreme grief may ultimately

(44:41):
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

(45:03):
was no good bothering keep a lookouts. 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. I felt like it too, choking, warm, stifling. Besides,

(45:27):
all I said, though it sounded extravagant, was absolutely true
to fact. What we afterwards alluded to as an attack
was really an attempt to 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,

(45:50):
and in its essence was purely protective. It developed itself,
I should say, two hours after the fog lifted and
its commenced, 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,

(46:11):
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 sand bank, or rather
of a chain of shallow patches stretching down the middle
of the river. They were discolored, just a wash, and
the whole lot was seen just under the water, exactly

(46:34):
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

(46:54):
station was on the west side, I naturally headed for
the western passage. End of part one of Chapter two