Heart of Darkness - Chapter 1 Part 1

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Of Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Chapter one. The Nellie,
a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter
of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had
made the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down

(00:22):
the river, the only thing for it was to come
too and wait for the turn of the tide. The
sea reach of the Thames stretched before us like the
beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing, the sea
and the sky were welded together without a joint, and
in the luminous space, the tanned sails of the barges,
drifting up with the tide, seemed to stand still in

(00:44):
red clusters of canvas sharply peaked with gleams of varnished spirits.
A haze rested on the low shores that ran out
to the sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark
above Gray's Send, and farther back still seemed condensed into
a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest and the

(01:06):
greatest town on earth. The director of Companies was our
captain and our host. We four affectionately watched his back
as he stood in the boughs, looking to seaward. On
the whole river, there was nothing that looked half so nautical.
He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified.

(01:30):
It was difficult to realize his work was not out
there in the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the
brooding gloom between us, there was, as I have already said,
somewhere the bond of the sea. Besides holding our hearts
together through long periods of separation, it had the effect
of making us tolerant of each other's yarns and even convictions.

(01:55):
The lawyer, the best of old fellows, had, because of
his many years and many virtues, the only cushion on deck,
and was lying on the only rug. The accountant had
brought out already a box of dominoes and was toying
architecturally with the bones. Marlowe sat cross legged, right aft,
leaning against the mizzen mast. He had sunken cheeks, a

(02:19):
yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and with
his arms dropped the palms of hands outwards resembled an idol.
The director, satisfied the anchor had good hold, made his
way aft and sat down amongst us, we exchanged a
few words lazily. Afterwards there was silence on board the yacht.

(02:44):
For some reason or other, we did not begin that
game of dominoes. We felt meditative and fit for nothing
but placid staring. The day was ending in a serenity
of still and exquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically, The sky,
without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light.

(03:08):
The very mist on the Essex Marsh was like a
gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the wooded rises inland
and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds. Only the
gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches, became
more somber every minute, as if angered by the approach
of the sun, and at last, in its curved and

(03:31):
imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white,
changed to a dull red without rays and without heat,
as if about to go out, suddenly stricken to death
by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd
of men. Forthwith a change came over the waters, and
the serenity became less brilliant but more profound. The old

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river in its broad reach, rested unruffled at the decline
of the day, after ages of good service done to
the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the
tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends
of the earth. We looked at the venerable stream, not
in the vivid flush of a short day that comes

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and departs forever, but in the august light of abiding memories.
And indeed, nothing is easier for a man who has,
as the phrase goes, followed the sea with reverence and affection,
that to evoke the great spirit of the past. Upon
the lower reaches of the Thames, the tidal current runs

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to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories
of men and ships. It had borne to the rest
of home, or to the battles of the sea. It
had known and served all the men of whom the
nation is proud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, Knights,
all titled and untitled, great Knights, errant of the sea.

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It had borne all the ships whose names are like
jewels flashing in the night of time from the golden hind,
returning with her rotund flanks full of treasure, to be
visited by the Queen's Highness, and thus passed out of
the gigantic tail to the erebis and terror bound on
other conquests, and that never returned. It had known the

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ships and the men they had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich,
from Erith, the adventurers and the settlers, King's ships, and
the ships of men on change, Captains, admirals, the dark
interlopers of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned generals of

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East India. Fleets hunters for gold, are pursuers of fame.
They all had gone out on that stream, bearing the
sword and often the torch, messengers of the might within
the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire.
What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river,
into the mystery of an unknown earth, the dreams of men,

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the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires. The sun set,
the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to
appear along the shore. The Chapman Lighthouse, a three legged
thing erect on a mud flat, shone strongly. Lights of
ships moved in the fairway, a great stir of lights

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going up and going down, and farther west on the
upper reaches, the place of the monstrous town was still
marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom, and sunshine,
a lurid glare under the stars. And this, also, said Marlow,
suddenly has been one of the dark places of the earth.

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He was the only man of us who still followed
the sea. The worst that could be said of him
was that he did not represent his class. He was
a seaman, but he was a wanderer too. While most
seamen led, if one may so express it, a sedentary life.
Their minds are of the stay at home order, and
their home is always with them the ship, and so

(07:21):
is their country the sea. One ship is very much
like another, and the sea is always the same. In
the immutability of their surroundings, the foreign shores, the foreign faces,
the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by
a sense of mystery, but by a slightly disdainful ignorance.

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For there is nothing mysterious to a seaman, unless it
be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence,
and as inscrutable as destiny. For the rest after his
hours of work, a casual stroll or a casual spree
on shore, suffices to unfold for him the secret of
a whole continent, and generally he finds the secret not

(08:06):
worth knowing. The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity,
the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of
a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical. If his
propensities to spin yarns be accepted, and to him the
meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel,

(08:27):
but outside, enveloping the tail which brought it out only
as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness
of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made
visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine. His remark did
not seem at all surprising. It was just like Marlow.

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It was accepted in silence. No one took the trouble
to grunt even and presently he said, very slow, I
was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first
came here, nineteen hundred years ago. The other day, light

(09:08):
came out of this river. Since you say nights, yes,
but it is like a running blaze on a plain,
like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live
in the flicker. It may last as long as the
old earth keeps rolling. But darkness was here yesterday. Imagine

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the feelings of a commander of a fine what do
you call em, trirem in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to
the north, run overland across the Gauls in a hurry,
put in charge of one of these craft, the Legionaries.
A wonderful lot of handyman. They must have been too
used to build, apparently by the hundred in a month

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or two, if we may believe what we read. Imagine
him here the very end of the world, a sea
the color of lead, sky the color of smoke, a
kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina, and
going up this river, with shores or orders or what
you like, sandbanks, marshes, forests, savages, precious little to eat,

(10:16):
fit for a civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink.
No Fellernian wine here, no going ashore here and there
a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle
in a bundle of hay, cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile

(10:40):
and death, death, skulking in the air, in the water,
in the bush. They must have been dying like flies here. Oh, yes,
he did it, did it very well too, no doubt,
and without thinking much about it either, except afterwards to
brag of what he had gone through in his time.
And perhaps they were men enough to face the darkness.

(11:05):
And perhaps he was cheered by keeping his eye on
a chance of promotion to the fleet at Ravenna, by
and by, if he had good friends in Rome and
survived the awful climate. Or think of a decent young
citizen in a toga, perhaps too much dice, you know,
coming out here in the train of some prefect or
tax gatherer or trader, even to mend his fortunes, land

(11:28):
in a swamp, marched through the woods, and in some
inland post, feel the savagery, the utter savagery had closed
round him, all that mysterious life of the wilderness that
stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts
of wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries.

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He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible,
which is also detestable. And it has a fascination too,
that goes to work upon him, the fascination of the abomination,
you know, imagining the growing regrets, the longing to escape,
the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate. He paused mind.

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He began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the
palm of the hand outward, so that with his legs
folded before him, he had a pose of a Buddha
preaching in European clothes, and without a lotus flower mind.
None of us would feel exactly like this. What saves
us his efficiency, the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps

(12:40):
were not much account really. They were no colonists. Their
administration was merely a squeeze and nothing more. I suspect
they were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force,
nothing to boast of when you have it, since your
strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.
They grabbed what they could get for the sake of

(13:02):
what was to be got. It was just robbery, with
violence aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going
at it blind, as is very proper for those who
tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly
means that taking it away from those who have a
different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not

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a pretty thing when you look into it too much.
What redeems it is the idea, only an idea at
the back of it, not a sentimental pretense, but an idea,
and an unselfish belief in the idea, something you can
set up and bow down before and offer a sacrifice to.

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He broke off. Flames glided in the river, small green flames,
red flames, white flames, pursuing, overtaking, joining, crossing each other,
then separating slowly or hastily. The traffic of the great
city went on in the deepening night upon the sleepless river.

(14:07):
We looked on, waiting patiently. There was nothing else to
do till the end of the flood. But it was
only after a long silence when he said, in a
hesitating voice, I suppose you, fellows, remember I did once
turn fresh water sailor for a bit that we knew

(14:28):
we were faded before the abb began to run to
hear about one of Marlow's inconclusive experiences. I don't want
to bother you much with what happened to me personally.
He began showing in this remark the weakness of many
tellers of tales, who seemed so often unaware of what
their audience would like best to hear. Yet to understand

(14:51):
the effect of it on me, you ought to know
how I got out there, what I saw, how I
went up that river to the place where I first
met the poor chain. Up it was the farthest point
of navigation and the culminating point of my experience. It
seemed somehow to throw a kind of light on everything
about me and into my thoughts. It was somber enough, too,

(15:15):
and pitiful, not extraordinary in any way, not very clear either, No,
not very clear, And yet it seemed to throw a
kind of light. I had then, as you remember, just
returned to London after a lot of Indian Ocean Pacific
China seas a regular dose of the East six years

(15:39):
or so, and I was loafing about hindering you fellows
in your work and invading your homes, just as though
I had got a heavenly mission to civilize you. It
was very fine for a time, but after a bit
I did get tired of resting. Then I began to
look for a ship, I should think the hardest work
on earth. But the ships wouldn't even look at me,

(16:00):
and I got tired of that game too. Now, when
I was a little chap I had a passion for maps.
I would look for hours at South America or Africa
or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration.
At that time, there were many blank spaces on the earth.
And when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on

(16:20):
a map, but they all look that, I would put
my finger on it and say, when I grow up,
I will go there. The North Pole was one of
these places. I remember, well, I haven't been there yet,
and shall not try now. The glamors off other places
were scattered about the hemispheres. I have been in some
of them, and well, we won't talk about that. But

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there was one yet, the biggest, the most blank, so
to speak, that I had a hankering after. True, by
this time it was not a blank space any more.
It had got filled since my boyhood with rivers and
lakes and names. It had ceased to be a blank
spt of delightful mystery, a white patch for a boy
to dream gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness.

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But there was in it one river, especially a mighty
big river, that you could see on the map resembling
an immense snake, uncoiled with its head in the sea,
its body at rest, curving afar over a vast country,
and its tail lost in the depths of the land.
And as I looked at the map of it in

(17:30):
a shop window, it fascinated me as a snake would
a bird, a silly little bird. Then I remembered there
was a big concern a company for trade on that
river dash it all, I thought to myself. They can't
trade without using some kind of craft on that lot
of fresh water steamboats. Why shouldn't I try to get

(17:50):
a charge of one. I went along Fleet Street, but
could not shake off the idea the snake had charmed me.
You understand, it was a continental concern, that trading society.
But I have a lot of relations living on the
continent because it's cheap and not so nasty as it looks.
They say, I'm sorry to own. I began to worry them.

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This was already a fresh departure for me. I was
not used to get things that way, you know. I
always went my own road and on my own legs.
Where I had a mind to go. I wouldn't have
believed it of myself But then, you see, I felt
somehow I must get there by hook or by crook,
so I worried them. The men, said, my dear fellow,

(18:33):
and did nothing. Then would you believe it? I tried
the women. I Charlie Marlowe, set the women to work
to get a job. Heavens well, you see the notion
drove me. I had an aunt, a dear enthusiastic soul.
She wrote, it will be delightful. I am ready to
do anything, anything for you. It is a glorious idea.

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I know, the wife of a very high personage in
the administration, and also a man who has lots of
influence with et cetera. She was determined to make no
end of fuss to get me a pointed skipper of
a river steamboat. If such was my fancy. I got
my appointment, of course, and I got it very quick.
It appears the company had received news that one of

(19:17):
their captains had been killed in a scuffle with the natives.
This was my chance, and it made me the more
anxious to go. It was only months and months afterwards,
when I made the attempt to recover what was left
of the body, that I heard the original quarrel arose
from a misunderstanding about some hens, yes, two black hens, Freslevin,

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that that was the fellow's name. A Dane thought himself
wronged somehow in the bargain, so he went ashore and
started to hammer the chief of the village with a stick. Oh,
it didn't surprise me in the least to hear this,
and at the same time to be told that Freslevin
was the gentlest, quietest creature that ever walked on two legs.
No doubt he was, But he had it's been a

(20:00):
couple of years already out there engaged in the noble cause,
you know, and he probably felt the need at last
of asserting his self respect in some way. Therefore he
whacked the old nigger mercilessly, while a big crowd of
his people watched him. Thunderstruck till some man, I was told,
the chief's son, in desperation at hearing the old chap yell,
made a tentative jab with a spear at the white man,

(20:23):
and of course it went quite easy between the shoulder blades.
Then the whole population cleared into the forest, expecting all
kinds of calamities to happen. While on the other hand,
the steamer Fresleevin commanded left, also in a bad panic,
in charge of the engineer. I believe afterwards nobody seemed
to trouble much about Fresleevin's remains till I got out

(20:44):
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

(21:06):
the fallen enclosures. 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,

(21:27):
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 show myself to my
employers and to sign the contract. In a very few hours,
I arrived in a city that always makes me think
of a whited sepulcher. Prejudiced, no doubt, I had no

(21:48):
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 and 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 right

(22:12):
and left, immense double doors standing ponderously. Ajar I slipped
through one of these cracks, went up a swept and
ungarnished 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 bottom chairs knitting black wool.

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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

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deal table in the middle, plain chairs all around the walls.
On one end a large shining map marked with all
the colors 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

(23:17):
to show where the jolly pioneers of progress drank the
jolly lager beer. However, I wasn't going into any of these.
I was going into the yellow dead in this center.
And the river was there, fascinating, deadly like a snake ach.
A door opened, A white haired secretarial head but wearing

(23:42):
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 and a frock coat.
The great man himself. He was fire feet six, I
should judge, and had his grip on the handle end

(24:03):
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 believed I undertook,

(24:24):
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

(24:46):
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, flat cloth slippers were propped
up on a footwarmer, and a cat reposed on her lap.
She wore a starched white affair on her head and

(25:09):
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 a different 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

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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

(25:53):
other scrutinizing the cheery and foolish faces with unconcerned old eyes,
ave old knitter of black wool morritui to sell utant.
Not many of those she looked at, ever, saw her again,
not half by a long way. There was yet a

(26:14):
visit to the doctor. A simple formality 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 upstairs and led me forth. He was

(26:37):
shabby and careless, with ink stains 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 vermouths, he glorified
the company's business, and by and by I expressed casually

(27:00):
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

(27:20):
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 in front and every way, taking notes carefully.
He was an unshaven little man in a threadbare cloat,

(27:42):
like a gabardine, 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

(28:05):
if at some quiet joke. So you are going out
there famous, interesting too, he gave me a certain glance
and made another note. Ever any madness in your family,
he asked, in a matter of fact tone. I felt
very annoyed. Is that question in the interests of science too?

(28:28):
It would be, he said, without taking any 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 imperturbly. I have a little theory, which you may,

(28:49):
Sieur 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

(29:12):
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?
What must before everything keep calm? He lifted a warning finger.

(29:35):
Du came, du came. 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

(29:56):
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 twopenny halfpenny

(30:18):
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 loosen, print and talk just about
that time, and the excellent woman, living right in the

(30:39):
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 Charley, that the laborer is worthy of

(30:59):
his high 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 sun set. Some confounded fact
we men have been living contentedly with ever since the

(31:22):
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 noticed, with less

(31:44):
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 commonplace 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 center of a continent, I were about
to set off for the center of the earth. I

(32:07):
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,

(32:30):
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 making, 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

(32:51):
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 rip
with steam. Here and there, grayish whitish specks showed up
clustered inside the white surf, with a flag flying above them,

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perhaps settlements some centuries old and still no bigger than
pin heads on the untouched expense of their background. We
pounded along, stopped, lended soldiers went on, lended customs house
clerks to Levy Toll in what looked like a god
forsaken wilderness with a tin shed and a flagpole lost

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in it, lended 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
particularly 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,

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trading places with names like Gran Bassam, little popo, names
that seemed to belong to some sordid farce acted in
front of a sinister black cloth, the idleness of a passenger.
My isolation amongst all these men with whom I had
no point of contact, The oily, languid sea, the uniform
somberness of the coast seemed to keep me away from

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the truth of things within the toll of a mournful
and senseless delusion. The voice of the serf heard now
and then, was a positive pleasure, like that speech of
a brother. It was something natural that had its reason,
that had a meaning. Now and then. A boat from
the shore gave one a momentary contact with reality. It

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was paddled by blackfellows. 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, and in

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energy of movement 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
the world of straightforward facts. But the feeling would not
last long. Something would turn up to scare it. Away. Once,

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I remember, 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,

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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 lane would dart and vanish, A little white smoke
would disappear, A tiny projectile would give a feeble screech,

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and nothing happened, Nothing could happen. There was a touch
of insanity in the preceding, 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

(36:27):
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

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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

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a particularized impression, but the general sense, a vague and
oppressive 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 further on.

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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

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we left the miserable little wharf, he tossed his head
contemptuously at the shore. Been livin there, he asked? I said, yes,
fine lot, these government chaps, are they not? He went on,
speaking English with great precision and considerable bitterness. It is
funny what some people will do for a few francs
a month. I wonder what becomes of that kind when

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it goes up country, I said to him. I expected
to see that soon. So oh oh, he exclaimed. He
shuffled a thwart, keeping one eye a head 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,

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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
excavation or hanging to the declivity. A continuous noise of

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the rapids above hovered over this scene of inhabited 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 station, said the Swede, pointing

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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

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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.

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The path was steep. A horn tuted 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,

(40:28):
but the subjectless 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 path.
They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of
earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with

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their footsteps. Black rags were wound around their loins, and
the short ends behind waggled to and fro like tails.
I could see every rib. The joints of their limbs
were like knots in a rope. Each had an iron
collar on his neck, and all were connected together with
a chain whose bites swung between them rhythmically clinking. Another

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report from the cliff made me think suddenly of that
ship of war I had seen firing into a continent.
It was the same kind of ominous voice, but these
men could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies.
They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the
bursting shells, had come to them an insoluble mystery from

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the sea. All their meager breasts panted together, the violently
dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily up hill. They
passed me within six inches without a glance, with that
complete deathlike indifference of unhappy savages. Behind this raw matter,

(41:54):
one of the reclaimed, the product of the new forces
at work, strolled despondently, carrying a rifle by its middle.
He had a uniform jacket with one button off, and,
seeing a white man on the path, hoisted his weapon
to his shoulder with alacrity. This was simple prudence, white
men being so much alike at a distance that he

(42:15):
could not tell who I might be. He was speedily
reassured with a large white, rascally grin, and a glance
at his charge. Seemed to take me into partnership in
his exalted trust. After all, I also was a part
of the great cause of these high and just proceedings.
Instead of going up, I turned and descended to the left.

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My idea was to let that chain gang get out
of sight before I climbed the hill. You know, I
am not particularly tender. I've had to strike and to
fend off. I've had to resist and to attack. Sometimes
that's only one way of resisting, without counting the exact
cost according to the demands of such sort of life
as I had blundered into, I've seen the devil violence,

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and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire.
But by all the stars, these were strong, lusty, red
eyed devils that swayed and drove men men, I tell you.
But as I stood on this hill side, I foresaw
that in the blinding sunshine of that land, I would
become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak eyed devil of

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a rapacious and pitiless folly. How insidious he could be too,
I was only to find out several months later, and
a thousand miles farther. For a moment I stood appalled,
as though by a warning. Finally I descended the hill
obliquely toward the trees I had seen end of the

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first part of chapter one, for a Heart of Darkness,