05 - Chapter 3 - Part 1. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

05 - Chapter 3 - 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 three of Heart of Darkness by
Joseph Conrad. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
Read by Bob Neufeld. I looked at him, lost in astonishment.
There he was before me in Motley, as though he

(00:23):
had absconded from a troop of mimes, enthusiastic, fabulous. His
very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was
an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed,
how he had succeeded in getting so far, how he

(00:43):
had managed to remain, why he did not instantly disappear.
I went a little farther, he said, Then still a
little farther, till I had gone so far that I
don't know how I ever got back. Never mind plan
empty time, I can manage you. Take courts away quick quick.

(01:04):
I tell you the glamor of youth enveloped, his partly
colored rags, his destitution, his loneliness, the essential desolation of
his futile wanderings. For months, for years, his life hadn't
been worth a day's purchase. And there he was, gallantly,
thoughtlessly alive to all appearances, indestructible, solely by the virtue

(01:29):
of his few years and of his unreflecting audacity. I
was seduced into something like admiration, like envy. Glamour urged
him on, glamour kept him unscathed. He surely wanted nothing
from the wilderness but space to breathe in and to
push on through. His need was to exist and to

(01:53):
move onwards at the greatest possible risk and with a
maximum of privation. If the absolutely pure, uncalculating, unpractical spirit
of adventure had ever ruled a human being, it ruled
this bepatched youth. I almost envied him the possession of

(02:14):
this modest and clear flame. It seemed to have consumed
all thought of self so completely that even while he
was talking to you, you forgot that it was he,
the man before your eyes, who had gone through these things.
I did not envy him his devotion to Kurtz. Though
he had not meditated over it, it came to him,

(02:37):
and he accepted it with a sort of eager fatalism.
I must say that to me it appeared about the
most dangerous thing in every way he had come upon
so far. They had come together unavoidably like two ships
becalmed near each other and lay rubbing sides at last.

(02:58):
I suppose Kurtz wanted an audience because on a certain occasion,
when it camped in the forest, they had talked all night.
Or more probably Kurts had talked. We talked of everything,
he said, quite transported. At the recollection, I forgot there
was such a thing as sleep. The night did not

(03:19):
seem to last an hour. Everything everything of love, too. Ah,
he talked to you, of love, I said, much amused.
It isn't what you think, he cried, almost passionately. It
was in general. He made me see things things. He

(03:43):
threw his arms up. We were on deck at the time,
and the headman of my woodcutters, lounging near by, turned
upon him, his heavy and glittering eyes. I looked around,
and I don't know why, but I assure you that never,
never before did this land, this river, this jungle, the

(04:05):
very arch of this blazing sky appeared to me so
hopeless and so dark, so impenetrable to human thought, so
pitiless to human weakness. And ever since you have been
with him, of course, I said, on the contrary, it
appears their intercourse had been very much broken by various causes.

(04:28):
He had, as he informed me, proudly, managed to nurse
Kurt through two illnesses. He alluded to it as you
would to some risky feet. But as a rule Kurts
wandered alone far in the depths of the forest, very often,
coming to this station. I had to wait days and
days before he would turn up. He said, Ah, it

(04:51):
was worth waiting for sometimes what was he doing exploring?
Or what? Asked? Oh? Yes, of course he had discovered
lots of villages a lake too. He did not know
exactly in what direction. It was dangerous to inquire too much,

(05:11):
But mostly his expeditions had been for ivery, but he
had no goods to trade with by that time. I objected,
there's a good lot of cartridges left. Even yet, he answered,
looking away, to speak plainly, he raided the country, I said.

(05:32):
He nodded, not alone, surely. He muttered something about the
villages round that lake. Kurt's got the tribe to follow him,
did he? I suggested? He fidgeted a little. They adored him,
he said. The tone of these words was so extraordinary

(05:54):
that I looked at him searchingly. It was curious to
see his mingled eagerness and the reluctance to speak of
Kurt The man filled his life, occupied his thoughts, swayed
his emotions. What can you expect? He burst out. He
came to them with thunder and lightning, you know, and

(06:15):
they had never seen anything like it, and very terrible.
He could be very terrible. You can't judge mister Kurtz
as you would an ordinary man. No, no, no, now,
just to give you an idea, I don't mind telling you.
He wanted to shoot me too one day, But I

(06:37):
don't judge him shoot you. I cried, what for? Well,
I had a small lot of ivory the chief of
that village near my house gave me. You see, I
used to shoot game for them. Well, he wanted it,
and wouldn't hear reason. He declared he would shoot me

(06:58):
unless I gave him the eye ivory and then cleared
out of the country because he could do so and
had a fancy for it, and there was nothing on
earth to prevent him killing whom he jolly well pleased.
And it was true too, I gave him the ivory.
What did I care? But I didn't clear out. No, No,

(07:20):
I couldn't leave him. I had to be careful, of course,
till we got friendly again. For a time he had
his second illness. Then afterwards I had to keep out
of the way, but I didn't mind. He was living
for the most part in those villages on the lake.
When he came down to the river, sometimes he would

(07:41):
take to me, and sometimes it was better for me
to be careful. This man suffered too much. He hated
all this, and somehow he couldn't get away. When I
had a chance, I begged him to try and leave
while there was time. I offer to go back with him,

(08:01):
and he would say yes, and then he would remain,
go off on another ivory hunt, disappear for weeks, forgot
himself amongst these people, forgot himself. You know why he's mad,
I said, he protested indignantly. Mister Kurtz couldn't be mad.

(08:22):
If I had heard him talk only two days ago,
I wouldn't dare hint at such a thing. I had
taken up my binoculars while we talked, and was looking
at the shore, sweeping the limit of the forest at
each side and at the back of the house. The
consciousness of there being people in that bush, so silent,
so quiet, as silent and quiet as the ruined house

(08:45):
on the hill made me uneasy. There was no sign
on the face of nature of this amazing tale that
was not so much told as suggested to me in
desolate exclamations completed by shrugs. It interrupted phrases in hints,
ending in deep sighs. The woods were unmoved, like a mask, heavy,

(09:07):
like the closed door of a prison. They looked with
their air of hidden knowledge, of patient expectation, of unapproachable silence.
The Russian was explaining to me that it was only
lately that mister Kurtz had come down to the river,
bringing along with him all the fighting men of that
lake tribe. He had been absent for several months, getting

(09:30):
himself adored, I suppose, and had come down unexpectedly with
the intention to all appearance of making a raid, either
across the river or down stream. Evidently the appetite for
more ivory had got the better of the what shall
I say, the less material aspirations. However, he had got

(09:52):
much worse. Suddenly I heard he was lying helpless, and
so I came up, took my chance, said the Russian. Oh,
he is bad, very bad. I directed my glass to
the house. There were no signs of life, but there
was the ruined roof the long mud wall peeping above

(10:15):
the grass, with three little square window holes, no two
of the same size. All this brought within reach of
my hand, as it were. And then I made a
brusque movement, and one of the remaining posts of that
vanished forest leaped up in the field of my glass.
You remember I told you I had been struck at

(10:38):
the distance by certain attempts at ornamentation, rather remarkable in
the ruinous aspect of the place. Now I suddenly had
a nearer view, and its first result was to make
me throw my head back, as if before a blow.
Then I went carefully from post to post with my glass,

(11:00):
and I saw my mistake. These round knobs were not ornamental,
but symbolic. They were expressive and puzzling, striking and disturbing,
food for thought and also for vultures, if there had
been any looking down from the sky. But at all events,

(11:20):
for such ants as were industrious enough to ascend the pole,
they would have been even more impressive. These heads on
the stakes, if their faces had not been turned to
the house. Only one the first I had made out
was facing my way. I was not so shocked as

(11:40):
you may think. The start back I had given was
really nothing but a movement of surprise. I expected to
see a knob of wood there, you know. I'd returned
deliberately to the first I had seen. And there it
was black, dried, sunken with closed eyelids, a head that

(12:01):
seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and
with the shrunken, dry lips showing a narrow white line
of the teeth. Was smiling too, smiling continuously at some
endless and jocose dream of that eternal slumber. I am
not disclosing any trade secrets. In fact, the manager said

(12:24):
afterwards that mister Kurtz's methods had ruined the district. I
have no opinion on that point, but I want you
clearly to understand that there was nothing exactly profitable in
these heads being there. They only showed that mister Kurtz
lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that

(12:44):
there was something wanting in him, some small matter, which,
when the pressing need arose, could not be found under
his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself,
I can't say. I think the knowledge came to him
at last, only at the very last. But the wilderness

(13:06):
had found him out early and had taken on him
a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it
had whispered to him things about himself which he did
not know, things of which he had no conception till
he took counsel with this great solitude, and the whisper
had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him, because

(13:31):
he was hollow at the core. I put down the glass,
and the head that had appeared near enough to be
spoken to seemed at once to have leaped away from
me into inaccessible distance. The admirer of mister Kurtz was
a bit crestfallen. In a hurried, indistinct voice, he began

(13:52):
to assure me he had not dared to take these
say symbols down. He was not afraid of the natives.
They would not stir till mister Kurtz gave the word.
His ascendancy was extraordinary. The camps of these people surrounded
the place, and the chiefs came every day to see him.

(14:13):
They would crawl. I don't want to know anything of
the ceremonies used. When approaching mister Kurtz, I shouted, curious
this feeling that came over me, that such details would
be more intolerable than those heads drying on the stakes
under mister Kurtz's windows. After all, that was only a

(14:33):
savage sight, while I seemed at one bound to have
been transported into some lightless region of subtle horrors, where pure,
uncomplicated savagery was a positive relief, being something that had
a right to exist obviously in the sunshine. The young
man looked at me with surprise. I suppose it did

(14:55):
not occur to him that mister Kurtz was no idol
of mine. He forgot I hadn't heard any of these
splendid monologs on what was it on love, justice, conduct
of life, or what not? If it had come to
crawling before mister Kurtz, he crawled as much as the

(15:16):
veriest savage of them all. I had no idea of
the conditions. He said these heads were the heads of rebels.
I shocked him excessively by laughing, rebels. What would be
the next definition? I was to hear? There had been enemies, criminals, workers,
and these were rebels. These rebellious heads looked very subdued

(15:41):
to me on their sticks. You don't know how such
a life tries a man like Kurtz, cried Kurtz's last disciple.
Well and you, I said I I I am a
simple man. I have no great thoughts. I want nothing
from anybody. How can you compare me to hiss? Feelings

(16:05):
were too much for speech, and suddenly he broke down.
I don't understand, he groaned. I've been doing my best
to keep him alive, and that's enough. I had no
hand in all this. I have no abilities. There hasn't
been a drop of medicine or a mouthful of invalid

(16:26):
food for months. Here he was shamefully abandoned, a man
like this with such ideas, shamefully shamefully, I I haven't
slept for the last ten nights. His voice lost itself.
In the calm of the evening. The long shadows of

(16:47):
the forest had slipped down hill while we talked, had
gone far beyond the ruined hovel, beyond the symbolic row
of stakes. All this was in the gloom, while we
down there were yet in the sunshine and the stretch
of the river abreast of the clearing glittered in a
still and dazzling splendor, with a murky and overshadowed bend

(17:09):
over and below. Not a living soul was seen on
the shore. The bushes did not rustle. Suddenly, round the
corner of the house, a group of men appeared, as
though they had come up from the ground. They waded
waist deep in the grass in a compact body, bearing

(17:29):
an improvised stretcher in their midst. Instantly, in the emptiness
of the landscape, a cry arose, whose shrillness pierced the
still air, like a sharp arrow flying straight to the
very heart of the land. And as if by enchantment,
streams of human beings, of naked human beings with spears

(17:50):
in their hands, with bows, with shields, with wild glances
and savage movements, were poured into the clearing by the
dark faced and pensive forest. The bushes shook, the grass
swayed for a time, and then everything stood still in
attentive immobility. Now, if he does not say the right

(18:13):
thing to them, we are all done for, said the Russian.
At my elbow. The knot of men with a stretcher
had stopped too half way to the steamer, as if petrified.
I saw the men on the stretcher set up lank
and with an uplifted arm above the shoulders of the bearers.

(18:34):
Let us hope that the man who can talk so
well of love in general will find some particular reason
to spare us this time, I said, I resented bitterly
the absurd danger of our situation, as if to be
at the mercy of that atrocious phantom had been a
dishonoring necessity. I could not hear a sound, but through

(18:57):
my glasses I saw the thin arm extra commandingly, the
lower jaw moving, the eyes of that apparition shining darkly
far in its bony head that nodded with grotesque jerks kurts.
Kurts that means short and German. Don't it well? The

(19:18):
name was as true as everything else in his life
and death. He looked at least seven feet long. His
covering had fallen off, and his body emerged from it,
pitiful and appalling, as from a winding sheet. I could
see the cage of his ribs all astir, the bones
of his arm waving. It was as though an animated

(19:41):
image of death carved out of old Ivory had been
shaking its hand with menaces and a motionless crowd of
men made of dark and glittering bronze. I saw him
open his mouth wide. It gave him a weirdly voracious aspect,
as though he had wanted to swallow all all the earth,
all the men before him. A deep voice reached me faintly.

(20:07):
He must have been shouting. He fell back. Suddenly the
stretcher shook as the bearers staggered forward again, and almost
at the same time, I noticed that the crowd of
savages was vanishing, without any perceptible movement of retreat, as
if the forest that had ejected these beings so suddenly
had drawn them in again as the breath is drawn

(20:29):
in a long aspiration. Some of the pilgrims behind the
stretcher carried his arms two shot guns, a heavy rifle
and a light revolver carbine, the thunderbolts of that pitiful Jupiter.
The manager bent over him, murmuring as he walked beside
his head. They laid him down in one of the

(20:50):
little cabins, just a room for a bed place and
a campstool or two. You know, he had brought his
belated correspondence, and a lot of torn envelopes and opened
letters littered his bed. His hand roamed feebly amongst his papers.
I was struck by the fire of his eyes and
the composed languor of his expression. It was not so

(21:14):
much the exhaustion of disease. He did not seem in pain.
This shadow looked satiated and calm, as though for the
moments it had had its fill of all the emotions.
He rustled one of the letters, and looking straight in
my face, said, I am glad somebody had been writing

(21:38):
to him about me. These special recommendations were turning up again.
The volume of tone he emitted, without effort, almost without
the trouble of moving his lips, amazed me. A voice,
a voice, It was grave, profound, vibrating. While the man
did not seem capable of a whis whisper, however, he

(22:02):
had enough strength in him fact issues no doubt, to
very nearly make an end of us. As you shall
hear directly, the manager appeared silently in the doorway. I
stepped out at once, and he drew a curtain after me.
The Russian, eyed curiously by the pilgrims, was staring at

(22:22):
the shore I followed the direction of his glands. Dark
human shapes could be made out in the distance, flitting
indistinctly against the gloomy border of the forest and near
the river. Two bronze figures leaning on tall spears stood
in the sunlight under fantastic head dresses of spotted skins,

(22:45):
warlike and still in statuesque repose, And from right to
left along the lighted shore moved a wild and gorgeous
apparition of a woman. She walked with measured steps, draped
in striped and fringed cloths, treading the earth proudly with
a slight jingle and flash of barbarous ornaments. She carried

(23:10):
her head high. Her hair was done in the shape
of a helmet. She had brass leggings to the knee,
brass wire gauntless to the elbow, a crimson spot on
her tawny cheek, innumerable necklaces of glass beads on her neck,
bizarre things, charms, gifts of witch men that hung about her,

(23:30):
glittered and trembled at every step. She must have had
the value of several elephant tusks upon her. She was
savage and superb wild eyed and magnificent. There was something
ominous and stately in her deliberate progress, and in the
hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land,

(23:52):
the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the feakened and
mysterious life, seemed to look at her as though it
had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous
and passionate soul. She came abreast of the steamer, stood
still and faced us. Her long shadow fell to the
water's edge. Her face had a tragic and fierce aspect

(24:17):
of wild sorrow and of dumb pain, mingled with the
fear of some struggling, half shaped resolve. She stood looking
at us without a stir, and like the wilderness itself,
with an air of brooding over an inscrutable purpose. A
whole minute passed, and then she made a step forward.

(24:40):
There was a low jingle, a glint of yellow metal,
a sway of fringed draperies, and she stopped, as if
her heart had failed her. The young fellow by my
side growled, the pilgrims murmured at my back. She looked
at us all as if her life had pended upon

(25:00):
the unswerving steadiness of her glance. Suddenly she opened her
bared arms and threw them up rigid above her head,
as though in an uncontrollable desire to touch the sky.
And at the same time, the swift shadows darted out
on the earth, swept around on the river, gathering the
steamer into a shadowy embrace. A formidable silence hung over

(25:26):
the scene. She turned away, slowly walked on, following the bank,
and passed into the bushes to the left. Once only
her eyes gleamed back at us in the dusk of
the thickets before she disappeared. If she had offered to
come aboard, I really think I would have tried to

(25:48):
shoot her, said the man of Patches nervously. I have
been risking my life every day for the last fortnight
to keep her out of the house. She got in
one day and kicked up a row about these miserable
rags I picked up in the storeroom to mend my
clothes with. I wasn't decent, at least it must have

(26:09):
been that, for she talked like a fury to Kurtz
for an hour, pointing at me now and then. I
don't understand the dialect of this tribe. Luckily for me.
I fancy Kurts felt too ill that day to care,
or they would have been mischief. I don't understand. No,

(26:29):
it's too much for me. Oh well, it's all over now.
At this moment, I heard Kurtz's deep voice behind the curtain.
Save me, save the ivery. You mean, don't tell me,
save me Why I've had to save you. You are

(26:52):
interrupting my plans now, sick, sick, not so sick as
you would like to believe. Never mind, I'll carry my
ideas out yet I will return. I'll show you what
can be done. You with your little peddling notions, you

(27:14):
are interfering with me. I will return. I the manager
came out. He did me the honor to take me
under the arm and lead me aside. He is very low,
very low, he said. He considered it necessary to sigh,

(27:35):
but neglected to be consistently sorrowful. We have done all
we could for him, haven't we. But there is no
disguising the fact mister Kurtz has done more harm than
good to the company. He did not see the time
was not ripe for vigorous action. Cautiously, cautiously, that's my principle.

(28:00):
We must be cautious. Yet the district is closed to
us for a time. Upon the whole the trade will suffer.
I don't deny. There is a remarkable quantity of ivory,
mostly fossil. We must save it at all events. But
look how precarious the position is. And why because the

(28:21):
method is unsound, do you, said I, looking at the shore,
call it unsound method? Without doubt? He exclaimed hotly. Don't
you no method at all? I murmured. After a while, exactly,
he exulted. I anticipated this shows a complete want of judgment.

(28:45):
It is my duty to point it out in the
proper quarter, Oh, said I. That fellow what's his name,
the brickmaker, will make a readable report for you. He
appeared confounded. For a moment. It seemed to me I
had never breathed an atmosphere so vile, and I turned

(29:05):
mentally to Kurt's for relief, positively for relief. Nevertheless, I
think Kurts is a remarkable man, I said with emphasis.
He started dropped on me a heavy glance, said very
quietly he was, and turned his back on me. My

(29:27):
hour of favor was over. I found myself lumped along
with Kurts as a partisan of methods for which the
time was not ripe. I was unsound, ah, but it
was something to have at least a choice of nightmares.
I had turned to the wilderness, really not to mister Kurtz,

(29:49):
who I was ready to admit was as good as buried.
And for a moment it seemed to me as if
I also were buried in a vast grave full of
unspeakable secret. I felt an intolerable weight of pressing my breast,
the smell of the damp earth, the unseen presence of
victorious corruption, the darkness of an impenetrable night. The Russian

(30:13):
tapped me on the shoulder. I heard him mumbling and
stammering something about brother Seamen. Couldn't conceive knowledge of matters
that would affect mister Kurtz's reputation. I waited for him.
Evidently mister Kurtz was not in his grave. I suspect
that for him, mister Kurtz was one of the immortals.

(30:36):
Well said, I at last speak out, as it happens,
I am mister Kurtz's friend in a way. He stated
with a good deal of formality, that had we not
been of the same profession, he would have kept the
matter to himself without regarding consequences. He suspected there was

(30:57):
an active ill will towards him on the part of
this these white men. That you are right, I said,
remembering a certain conversation I had overheard. The manager thinks
you are to be hanged. He showed a concern at
this intelligence, which amused me at first. I had better
get out of the way quietly, he said, earnestly. I

(31:21):
can do no more for Kurtz now, and they would
soon find some excuse. What's to stop them. There's a
military post three hundred miles from here. Well, upon my word,
said I, perhaps you had better go. If you have
any friends amongst the savages near by plenty, he said.

(31:42):
They are simple people, and I want nothing, you know,
he stood, biting his lip. Then I don't want any
harm to happen to these whites here. But of course
I was thinking of mister Kurtz's reputation. But you are
a brother, seaman, and a right said I. After a time,

(32:02):
mister Kurtz's reputation is safe with me. I did not
know how truly I spoke. He informed me, lowering his voice,
that it was Kurtz who had ordered the attack to
be made on the steamer. He hated sometimes the idea
of being taken away and then again. But I don't

(32:25):
understand these matters. I am a simple man. He thought
it would scare you away, that you would give it up.
Thinking him dead. I could not stop him. Oh, I
had an awful time of it this last month. Very well,
I said, he is all right now, yes, he muttered,

(32:48):
not very convinced, apparently, thanks said I I shall keep
my eyes open. Oh good, quiet eh, he urged anxiously.
It would be awful for his rete putation if anybody here,
I promised a complete discretion with great gravity. I have
a canoe and three blackfellows waiting not very far off.

(33:12):
I am off. Could you give me a few Martini
Henry Cartridges? I could, and did with proper secrecy. He
helped himself with a wink at me to a handful
of my tobacco between sailors, you know, good English tobacco.

(33:34):
At the door of the pilot house, he turned round.
I say, haven't you a pair of shoes you could spare?
He raised one leg. Look. The soles were tied with
knotted strings. Sandalwise under his bare feet. I rooted out
an old pear, at which he looked with admiration, before

(33:54):
tucking it under his left arm. One of his pockets,
bright red, was bulging with cartridges. From the other, dark blue,
peeped thousands, inquiry, etc. Etc. He seemed to think himself
excellently well equipped for a renewed encounter with the wilderness. Ah,

(34:17):
I'll never never meet such a man again. You ought
to have heard him recite poetry his own too, it was,
he told me poetry. He rolled his eyes at the
recollection of these delights. Oh, he enlarged my mind. Good Bye,

(34:40):
said I. He shook hands and vanished in the night.
Sometimes I asked myself whether I had ever really seen him,
whether it was possible to meet such a phenomenon. When
I woke up shortly after midnights, his warning came to
my mind with its hint of danger, but seemed, in

(35:01):
the starred darkness, real enough to make me get up
for the purpose of having a look round on the hill.
A big fire burned, illuminating fitfully a crooked corner of
the station house. One of the agents, with a picket
of a few of our blacks armed for the purpose,
was keeping guard over the ivory. But deep within the

(35:22):
forest red gleams that wavered that seemed to sink and
rise from the ground. Amongst confused columnar shapes of intense
blackness showed the exact position of the camp where mister
Kurtz's adorers were keeping their uneasy vigil. The monotonous beating
of a big drum filled the air with muffled shocks

(35:42):
and a lingering vibration, a steady droning sound of many
men chanting each to himself. Some weird incantation came out
from the black flat wall of the woods, as the
humming of bees comes out of a hive, and had
a strange narcotic effect upon my half away senses. I
believe I dozed off leaning over the rail till an

(36:05):
abrupt burst of yells and overwhelming outbreak of a pent
up and mysterious frenzy woke me up in a bewildered wonder.
It was cut short all at once, and the low
droning went on with an effect of audible and soothing silence.
I glanced casually into the little cabin. A light was

(36:25):
burning within, but mister Kurtz was not there. I think
I would have raised an outcry if I had believed
my eyes. But I didn't believe them at first. The
thing seemed so impossible. The fact is I was completely
unnerved by a sheer, blank, fright, pure abstract terror, unconnected

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with any distinct shape of physical danger. What made this
emotion so overpowering was, how shall I define it? The
moral shock I received, as if something altogether monsters, intolerable
to thought and odious to the soul had been thrust
upon me unexpectedly. This lasted, of course, the merest fraction

(37:09):
of a second, and then the usual sense of commonplace,
deadly danger. The possibility of a sudden onslaught and massacre,
or something of the kind which I saw impending, was
positively welcome and composing. It pacified me, in fact, so
much that I did not raise an alarm. There was

(37:30):
an agent buttoned up inside an ulster and sleeping on
a chair on deck, within three feet of me. The
yells had not awakened him. He snored very slightly. I
left him to his slumbers and leaped ashore. I did
not betray mister Kurtz. It was ordered I should never
betray him. It was written, I should be loyal to

(37:53):
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,

(38:13):
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 forgot him. The grass
was wet with dew. I strode rapidly with clinched fists.
I fancy I had some vague notion of falling upon

(38:34):
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 improper
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 Winchester's held to the ship.

(38:55):
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

(39:20):
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 great semicircle, I verily believe, chuckling to myself, so

(39:43):
as to get in front of that stir of that
motion I had seen, if indeed I had seen anything,
I was circumventing kurts 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,

(40:09):
like a vapor 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.

(40:34):
It was by no means over yet. Suppose he began
to shout. Though he could hardly stand, there was still
plenty of vigor in his voice. Go away, hide yourself,
he said, in that profound tone. It was very awful.

(40:55):
I glanced back. We were within thirty yards from the
nearest fire. A black figure stood up, strolled 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

(41:21):
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

(41:45):
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

(42:07):
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
immense plans, he muttered, irresolutely, Yes, said I. But if

(42:29):
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

(42:50):
blood run cold. And now for this stupid scoundrel, 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 purpose. I tried to break the spell,

(43:13):
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
monstrous passions. This alone, I was convinced, had driven him
out to the edge of the forest, to the bush

(43:33):
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 position was not in being
knocked on the head, though I had a very lively

(43:55):
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

(44:15):
above or below him. 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

(44:35):
you what we said, repeating the phrases we pronounced. But
what's the good? They were common everyday words, the familiar,
vague sounds, exchanged 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

(44:58):
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.

(45:22):
And therein was my only chance, barring, of course, the
killing him there and then, which wasn't so good on
account of unavoidable noise. But his soul was mad, being
alone in the wilderness. It had looked within itself, and
by heavens, I'd tell you it had gone mad. I

(45:45):
had for my sins, I suppose to go through the
ordeal of looking into myself. No eloquence could have been
so withering to one's belief in mankind as his final
burst of sincerit. He struggled with himself too. I saw it,
I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a

(46:08):
soul that knew no restraint, no faith, no fear, yet
struggling 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 of my

(46:28):
back down the hill, and yet I had only supported him,
his bony arm clasped round my neck. He was not
much heavier than a child. And of part one of
Chapter three